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colony was privately established and run with a small government subsidy from 1833 until 1839 when the subsidy was withdrawn and the school collapsed.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. - 29 -

THE BEAZLEY REPORT

The Beazley Report was released in April 1984.

Its recommendations were grouped into five areas, and were as follows:-

1. Curriculum: These dealt with updating, diversifying and balancing the curriculum and co-ordinating it across levels of education. They also outlined the Unit Curriculum system which will be used at lower-secondary level from next year. This gives students a wider range of choice in units to be studied and frees them to work at their own pace and level. This section also dealt with ways in which basic skills could be improved.

2. Certification and Tertiary Selection: These were complementary to the McGaw recommendations. They also proposed ways in which reports on student accomplishments could be clearer and more detailed.

3. Teaching Staff: These dealt with ways in which the quality of teaching staff could be improved through selection and pre-service and in-service selection procedures. Proposals included teachers' promotion by merit, a system which is now operating.

4. Community Participation in Schooling: These dealt with the need for community participation in the running of schools. The proposals for co­ operative school-based decision making constituted the basis for the Better . Schools proposals. Various forms of community participation are already working in many schools in a pilot project established as a result of these reco m m mendations.

5. Special Groups: These dealt with the ways in which the needs of children with special needs (the handicapped, Aborigines and non-English speakers and so on) should be met. The proposals were aimed at achieving equity for the disadvantaged - aims which have been substantially achieved through rapid implementation. In particular these have been major gains in the education services offered to Aborigines, in the new system of integrating previously isolated handicapped children with the mainstream of schooling and in the provision of equal opportunity across the system through the establishment of the Equal Opportunity Branch. The equal opportunity proposals of the Beazley Comm ittee have been implemented.

The Report was adopted in principle by a Special Conference of the Teachers Union in May 1985, and implementation began promptly.

IMPLEMENTAnON

The task of implementation in this case was much greater.

Committees were established inside the Education Department to work on every aspect of Beazley implementation. Much attention naturally concentrated on the radical proposals to reform lower secondary education and to replace the Achievement Certificate. The proposal for a unit-based curriculum based in seven areas of study with vertical time-tabling (ie.; the capacity for students to choose units outside those at their year-level) was far-sighted, but the practicalities proved troublesome.

An early effect of this was the four-term year. Beazley proposed units of term length to replace existing year-long units of study. I felt these units were too short and we - 30 -

compromised on semester-length units. A two-semester, four-term year was a logical progression and was introauced in 1986.

The unit system itself required much development, and it was not until 1987 that we were in a position to pilot the scheme in seven schools. The lower-school unit curriculum will be in place for all government schools in 1988, with further unit development and vertical time-tabling in following years. Administrative computing for high schools for the unit curriculum, will be made available in 1988.

In many ways, the development of the Beazley Report and its implementation marked a significant change in approach to education by Labor in Government, compared to Labor in Opposition.

In Opposition, the approach had clearly been one of increased resources, though a subsidiary theme had been using existing resources more effectively. We had planned to finance smaller class sizes in primary schools, for example, by maintaining the staff establishment while student numbers declined - the way it had been done in the Eastern States. However, even by the time the Beazley Committee was formed I was advising it to work on the basis of re-ordering the use of existing resources rather than expecting vastly increased funding. In part this approach was designed to reduce the lik elihood of the Beazley Comm ittee merely compiling a wish-list for additional resources from all of the interest groups represented on the Committee. I was not completely successful in this - the Teachers' Union, in particular, took the opportunity to have a number of its industrial claims, notably increased time away from students for primary teachers, into the recom mendations.

By the time of our first Budget, the economic realities were becoming clearer to us, and the notion of re-allocating existing resouces became central to our ideas of educational reform. However, there is no doubt that our inability to' offer sweeteners in the way of increased resources, as had been done with the Achievement Certificate, increased the difficulty of winning acceptance for our reforms from the Teachers' Union and among teachers generally.

THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL SYSTEM STRUCTURE

As implementation of the Beazley/McGaw reforms began, we were already looking at the structure of the Government school system as a whole. The Beazley Report addressed the needs of students in this age, and the way those needs were met in the curriculum and the classroom. But the structure of the education system, and in particular the Education Department, was largely unchanged. This meant that the power balance in education, and the balance of resource allocation remained substantially unchanged.

A review of these fundamental questions of struc ture began early in 1986 by the Government's Functional Review Committee. The early retirement of the Director­ General of Education opened up more radical possibilities and I suggested a Ministry of Education structure that co-ordinated the whole education portfolio in a more integrated way. This proposal was refined by the Functional Review Committee and adopted by the Government in August 1986. Under this structure the Ministry had a central Executive under a Chief Executive Offficer, with three major divisons, each with an Executive Director - Schools, Policy and Resources, and TAFE.

Other parts of the educaton structure retained an independence, but related more closely to the Ministry particularly in Budget matters. These included the WA Post Secondary Education Commission, the Secondary Education Authority and non-government schools.

Prior to the establishment of the Ministry, I had already created an informal Council of the heads of each education agency and the non-government school systems. This - 31 -

became formalised as the Executive Planning Group with the Ministry structure. It plays a most important role in co-ordinating across the sectors.

THE BETTER SCHOOLS REPORT

With the appointment of key Ministry personnel, the Functional Review Committee made recom mendations on the structures of the Schools 0 ivision. From their adm inistrative proposals and the philosophical thrust of the Beazley Report was produced the Better Schools report, which was released in January 1987.

This report proposed a significant devolution of power and functions to schools, involving both teachers and parents in school decision making processes. It proposed to give schools significant untied grants so that school communities could have more control over the deployrnen t of resources in the school to meet the educational needs of its students. The head office of the Ministry was to be reduced by over 40 %, as functions were devolved to schools.

The key principles of the Better Schools report were:-

DEVOLUTION of resources management to schools.

DECENTRALISATION of support for schools.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION in schools management

COLLABORATIVE DECISION MAKING in schools.

EQUITY of resource allocation across schools.

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR STANDARDS at the school level.

RESPONSIVENESS TO CHANGE at both school and system level.

The head office was proposed to become less directive and controlling and more the provider of services and advice to schools. Use and allocation of head office resources would be driven by school demand, not central decision. Schools would be grouped into school districts, and both the district and the head office would have an audit function, both in financial and educational terms. Curriculum would remain essentially a central responsibility.

Although some preliminary implementation of the Better Schools report has begun, it is proposed to phase in the recommendations fully between 1988 and 1992.

UNION CONFLICT

The release of the Better Schools report saw a simmering disagreement between the Teachers' Union and the Government break into open conflict. The Union had been slower and more reluctant that the Government to recognise the squeeze on funds both economic and political factors were producing. In the second half of 1985, changes in the Union leadership were followed by a public campaign for more time away from the classroom for primary teachers.

I proposed to the Union's 1985 Conference a method whereby this could be achieved by re-ordering the allocation of resources to schools, and giving decision-making power to schools, in effect pre-shadowing the course later to be taken by the Better Schools report. - 32 -

The Union rejected this in favour of a public campaign designed to pressue the Government in the lead up to the 1986 election. However, as the election became imminent, and with the Government clearly not going to give way, the Union Executive backed down and accepted the offer I haa made and their Conference rejected months before. This solved the problem for the election (and for primary teachers, for that matter, who now got their Duties Other Than Teaching Time), but resulted in a fierce factional battle inside the Union, with the Executive under virulent attack for allegedly selling out to the Government. After that the process of getting intelligent agreements with the Union became almost impossible.

Throughout 1986, disagreements had occurred over a range of resource issues, many to do with Beazley implementation. The situation was exacerbated by cuts to some areas of education in the 1986/87 Budget, notably to the Head Office, but most trouble came from a Government attempt to wind back some of the generous working conditions enjoyed by TAFE staff. A brief strike resulted until a compromise was reached in which conditions were would back but not as much as the Government had wanted.

The initial reaction of the Union delegation which had received an advance copy of the Better Schools report had been favourable but within days the Union's public position had become one of hostility. Internal factional battles in the Union, in which the charge "selling out the Government" was freely used, made the task of consultation extremely difficult. In the end the -Union settled for a process of secret negotiation while publicly denying that negotiations were proceeding. This was unsatisfactory to the Government and negotiations broke down.

The occurrence of the three State by-elections in May 1987 proved too great a temptation for those in the Union leadership determ ined to demonstrate their political clout, and the negotiations were abandoned in favour of a political campaign in the by­ elections. The Union's calculation clearly was that there would be a substantial swing against the Government which the Union could claim credit for and which they might well be able to increase. Something over $100,000 of members' funds was spent on the campaign, much of which was aimed at me.

In the event, the campaign was a miserable failure. The Labor vote picked up during the campaign period, and the Government suffered minor swings only in difficult political ti meso

Having lost the by-election campaign, the Union then was out-manouevred in the post­ election wash-up,and was belatedly forced to rejoin the consultative process in terms less advantageous than those which had been available prior to the campaign. With the failure of this campaign the Union lapsed into an almost complete absorption- with internal struggles and its opposition to the Government's reform programme ceased to be a factor. A notable part of the Union's failure in this area was in its failure to gain the support of parents. The W.A. Council of State School Organisations, the parents' representative body, had maintained a good level of support for the Government's proposals.

SPECIFIC POLICIES

I have dealt so far with the general principles of education reform involved in the Beazley and Better Schools reports. Arising from those, or developed in conjunction with them have been a wide range of specific policies which have infringed every facet of education - equal opportunity programmes, promotion on merit, specific programmes in TAFE to cater for the young unemployed, to name just a few. Two committees of inquiry were chaired by Labor Members of Parliament - the Kelly Report led to broader and more equitable programmes for intellectually talented children, while the Beggs - 33 -

Report placed lim itations on the cost of educa tion to parents.

A real effort has been made to address the needs of Aboriginal students across the State. The W.A. Aboriginal Education Consultative Group was established to bring Aboriginal people into the decision making processes.

Positions in the Aboriginal Education Branch were filled by Aboriginal people as far as possible, including the top position. Production of an Aboriginal studies curriculum to be included at all levels of education for all students was set in train, as were moves to have Aboriginal languages taught in appropriate community schools. Secondary education facilities were established in a number of remote communities, and talks began with the Commonwealth, South Australian and Northern Territory governments with a view to having a unified educational system for the central desert region of Australia.

Great progress has been made in the education of intellectually handicapped children. Our policy of integrating these students in normal schools through the establishment of education support units has won Australian, and some international acclaim. It has also been our policy to bring into education severely and multiply handicapped children who previously received no education at all.

A key plank in our 1983 election platform had been a promise to provide places in pre­ school education for all four-year-olds on the basis of two-half-days a week. When we began to implement -this policy, we discovered that many five-year-olds had not been able to obtain pre-primary places, so our first move was to guarantee places for all five­ year-olds. The number of places for four-year-olds has been progressively increased to the point where an estimated 50% will be catered for during the 1988 school year.

Our approach to the tertiary education needs of the State has had Australia-wide ramifications. From the beginning we souqht to draw tertiary institutions into the process of technological research of benefit in developing industries (and thus jobs) in Western Australia. Much of this was done by Mal Bryce, as Minister for Technology, and centred on the development of Technology Park in association with the Western Australian Institue of Technology.

However, the limits on research funding imposed on WAIT by the binary system and inflexibility of Commwealth policy led me to float the idea of conferring university status on WAIT in 1984. The idea was controversial from the start, and it was clear from a report produced for me by the WAIT Council that many courses at WAIT were not at the level one would expect of courses in other universities, though many were.

This led me to refine the proposal to a University of Technology, an institution sponsoring both University and CAE courses. An alternative proposal I made, for the amalgamation of WAIT, Murdoch and the W.A. College of Advanced Education into a single State University, was not widely supported, though in the opinion of some the best approach.

CURTIN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

These proposals opened up an Australia-wide debate on the binary system, which in my view was long overdue. Legislation to establish WAIT as a University of Technology passed through the 1986 Budget session of Parliamen t and on January 1, 1987 Curtin University of Technology officially came into existence. In the view of many around Australia, this move spelt the beginning of the end for the binary system, even through Commonwealth agreement for the change of status or improvement in funding has not yet been forthcoming.

We had run foul of the Commonwealth previously in tertiary education, over the - 34 -

establishment of the Bunbury Institute of Advanced Education. This move was part of our Bunbury 2000 strategy to begin the process of decentralisation in Western Australia. The Bunbury Institute was established as a campus of the W.A. College of Advanced Education in legislation which established the WACAE in its federated form. The Commonwealth refused to recognise either the State's rights or policies in this matter and would not provide funds, going so far as to alter the State's order of priorities in tertiary education projects. The State Government then built the Institute from its own funds and has maintained it by allocating part of WACAE's students number to Bunbury. However, State supplementation has been necessary to establish a quality library and computer system.

The re-assertion of the State's position in tertiary education in Australia, led by Western Australia, has been picked up in other States, and a thorough re-assessment of tertiary education in this country cannot be far away. I have several times called on the Commonwealth to take the lead in this re-assessment.

This State has also been the leader in the sale of education services overseas. Though we got into this area for economic rather than educational reasons, the extra income generatated by our institutions has materially assisted Australian students in those institutions. As with so many other initiatives on reforms we have instituted, this matter was highly controversial at first, but soon accepted by all. The Co-ordinating Committee which I chair is a model of inter-institution, inter-sector and government and private enterprise co-operation.

OPPOSITION

Reform of any kind in a conservative society like Australia is not easy and I won't pretend that these education reforms have not generated opposition. Because of the public profile of education, and the vast range of well-organised and often well-financed interest groups, the progress of education reform is often bitter and bloody. We've had some of that here, but in my view, given the magnitude of the reforms and the relatively short time-scale over which they have been achieved, the opposition and controversy has been relatively minor compared to the experience in other states and other countries.

The Burke Labor Government is not often looked upon by commentators as a reform ist government, but I believe history will find otherwise. In fact there are few areas of our administration not marked by significant and consistent reform.

We can take pride in our performance in education. In four and a half years we have re­ shaped our education system with a magnitude and pace unequalled in the previous history of our State. We now have an education system relevant to the needs of students and the State, one in which the participants have greater power, and which has the capacity to change and evolve with the changing needs of our community, a system which ought to be well able to carry us into the twenty first cen tury.

BOB PEARCE

1987