Transcript ISDA Week 2 - Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney

ISDA Week 2
AWAY DEBATE
TOPIC: EDUCATION
Topic Sub-Areas
• Tertiary Ed
• Co-ed
• Public vs Private
• National Syllabus
• Rural and Urban
General Knowledge
• Who is our Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth?
• What is vocational education?
• What is the difference between private and public schools?
• What is the approximate percentage of students attending private
and public schools?
• What is a selective school?
• What does the term ‘standardised testing’ mean?
• What is HECS/HELP?
Current Affairs
• Secondary schooling system in NSW failing to equip students with
skills they need for the workplace
• school culture favours traditional academic subjects with an emphasis on
entry to university
• New report led by academics from the Melbourne Graduate School of
Education for the NSW Business Chamber
• Too much focus on university pathways rather than “employment logic” found
in countries like Germany and Denmark which have a strong emphasis on
apprenticeships
• countries like Germany and Austria have effective vocational education and
training (VET) systems and low youth unemployment
• strong co-operative effort by government, employers and educators to design
and deliver the kind of education and training which provides mutual benefits
to industry and young people
Current Affairs
• Privatisation of vocational education isn’t working
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a recall of certificates due to sub-par standards in these institutions
huge profits at taxpayers' expense
aggressive marketing with a common “buy now, pay later, plus free iPad” hook
subcontracting out course content, teaching and assessment to other providers,
including unregistered providers
up-selling students into courses they hadn’t intended to enrol in
delivering courses in fewer hours and online
supposed to improve the range and quality of training offerings, make the sector
more responsive to the needs of industry, and to provide greater transparency.
The annual report of the Australian Skills Quality Authority last year found that 75%
of Registered Training Organisations failed to meet minimum standards on a first
inspection.
Current Affairs
• Should Australia should have fewer selective schools?
• Most experts agree that comprehensive education systems are more
equitable than differentiated systems (where the schools choose the pupils)
because they are less selective.
• Differentiated systems tend to reproduce social inequalities.
• students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds have a competitive
advantage.
• Differentiated systems mean the schools can cater to specific groups of
student’s needs
• Selective schools are a good incentive and goal
• Canada model
Current Affairs
• Why Finland and Norway still shun university tuition fees – even for
international students
• The Finnish government proposed last year that universities would be able to
introduce fees for international students coming from outside the EU
• After lively public debate, Finnish gov decided not to go ahead with proposals
• Researcher Leasa Weimer’s recent study concluded that the main actors opposing
tuition fees were the powerful Finnish student organisations
• They feared that collecting tuition fees from international students would open the
gate to tuition fee reform for national students as well.
• The students also said that a tuition-free system supports international social justice
by giving students from developing countries an opportunity to participate in higher
education.
• introduction of tuition fees would undermine Finnish internationalisation efforts as
it would be likely to lead to a significant decrease in the number of international
students
Current Affairs
• Higher education reforms: Federal Government rolls out advertising
campaign publicising university deregulation proposals
• the Senate voted down the Government's proposed changes, which included
allowing universities to set their own fees and a 20 per cent cut in funding to
the higher education sector.
• Advertisements out a few days later
• Pyne introduces new bill with amendments, including dumping plans to
charge higher interest on student loans and introducing a five-year interest
rate pause on HECS debts for new parents.
• Opposition treasury spokesman Chris Bowen said the ad campaign was a
farce and demanded the Government reveal its cost
• "What they do is they spend millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on
taxpayer-funded advertising which is misleading.“
• Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has told Labor MPs he wants to destroy the
plan either now or in an election campaign.
Current Affairs
• How does deregulation work and what does it mean in numbers?
• Deregulation means that each university / institution will be able to set
their own fees.
• In the recent government proposal, this means that univeristies would
have to pay a 20 per cent tax on fee increases above the current student
price caps, rising to 60 per cent on fees more than $5,000 above the caps,
and 80 per cent on fees more than $10,000 above the caps, according to an
example put forward by HECS architect Bruce Chapman in his submission
advocating a tax to discourage excessive price hikes in a deregulated
market.
• The example assumes that the government doesn’t cut teaching funding by
20 per cent. If the cut was left in place the initial threshold could be set at a
lower level.
Key things you should know
• Why education is important
• Education and training makes an essential and diverse contribution to
the prosperity and wellbeing of Australian society. By providing
individuals with the information and skills they need to obtain
rewarding work and contribute to the knowledge economy, the
education sector helps all Australians to participate fully in modern
society.
Key things you should know
• School organisation and operation:
• Schools in Australia may be classified as either government or nongovernment schools. Government schools are the direct responsibility
of the Director-General of Education in each state/territory and
receive funding from the relevant state/territory government. Nongovernment schools can be further classified, based on selfidentification of the school’s affiliation. Non-government schools are
grouped for reporting as Catholic or independent. Non-government
schools operate under conditions determined by state and territory
government regulatory authorities and receive funding from the
Australian Government and relevant state or territory government.
Key things you should know
• Government Responsibilities in Education
• Under the Commonwealth Constitution, the state and territory governments are
responsible for providing schooling to all school-age children. They have the
major financial responsibility for government schools, contribute supplementary
funds to non-government schools and regulate school policies and programs.
They determine curricula, course accreditation, student assessment and awards
for both government and non-government schools. State and territory
governments are also responsible for the administration and major funding
of vocational education and training (VET) and for legislation relating to the
establishment and accreditation of higher education courses.
The Commonwealth government has special responsibilities in education and
training for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, migrants, international
partnerships in education, and providing financial assistance for students. It is
principally responsible for funding non-government schools and higher education
institutions, and provides supplementary funding for government schools and
VET.
Key things you should know
• Higher Education
• Providers of higher education that receive funding from the
Australian Government can be publicly or privately operated, and can
be either self-accrediting or non self-accrediting institutions. Selfaccrediting institutions primarily include universities, and have the
authority to award formal qualifications. Non self-accrediting higher
education providers are accredited by state and territory authorities.
They are mainly private providers of varying sizes, and include
business colleges and other providers that offer courses in areas such
as information technology, natural therapies, hospitality, health,
theology, law and accounting.
Key things you should know
• The HECS system
• designed by economist Bruce Chapman and implemented by the HawkeKeating government
• it allows students to pay their share of the cost of their education over time,
and do so contingent on income.
• This does two things. First, it provides credit to students, thereby eliminating
the need to have up-front cash to pay tuition fees.
• Second, it provides insurance against labour market risk. Loan payments are
only due when a solid income is being earned.
Key things you should know
• What deregulation will do
• Gets rid of price caps, leading to…
• over-pricing and excessive debts
• greater opportunities for already high-achieving students and inferior
opportunities for those who need more support
• greater opportunities for students from high socioeconomic backgrounds and
weaker opportunities for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
• insufficient amounts of extra revenue going into improving teaching and learning
and the student experience
• some waste of public funds due to poor attention to effective transition to the
new market system
• higher education benefiting but vocational education being damaged.
• Reduce government deficit significantly
• Free market economy (HECS still in place)
Key things you should know
• There were 9,468 schools operating in Australia in 2010, of which
71% were government schools. Of the non-government schools,
nearly two-thirds were Catholic
• In 2010, there were 3.5 million students in Australian schools, twothirds of whom were in government schools and one-third in nongovernment schools
Good sites
• Australian Bureau of Statistics:
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by%20Subject/13
01.0~2012~Main%20Features~Education%20and%20training~23
• The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/au/education
• ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-02/parker-unideregulation-speech/5933302
• SMH:
Example topic – seniors to workshop
• That there is no place in schools for religion
• GOOD LUCK GIRLS!!!