AUSTRALIA (Commonwealth Union)_According to a new analysis, Australian governments reduced education investment during the early phases of the Coronavirus epidemic, whereas the majority of the OECD did the opposite.
According to the most recent OECD Education at a Glance report, Australian public education spending decreased by about 2% between 2019 and 2020, whereas the OECD average increased by roughly 1.5%. Only one of the 38 major OECD members at the time cut spending more than Australia did, and that was Hungary.
An inconsistent picture of Australia’s education system is presented in the organization’s yearly report card, which examines education funding and policy among OECD countries. According to the research, Australia continues to have one of the largest private school sectors in the world by proportion.
The survey also demonstrates that while early childhood, primary, and secondary school teachers in Australia who hold degrees are paid more than the OECD average, they spend more time in the classroom.
Many Australian schools started offering online classes as the coronavirus epidemic struck in early 2020 and the majority of pupils were urged to stay at home.
Measures to support kids are still essential, according to the report’s description of the effects on children throughout the OECD. In order to safeguard kids and minimize learning losses brought on by COVID-19, it was said that public funds would be required.
Australia, however, was one of a small number of nations whose public spending fell at the time, according OECD data. That was in spite of consistent increases in funding per student over the previous ten years.
Meredith Peace, vice president of the Australian Education Union, claimed that the drop in spending was evidence that governments had abandoned teachers. “They required support at a time when schools and students were dealing with extremely difficult circumstances as the pandemic reached its peak.”
Ms. Peace stated that the comparatively large amount of private funding that Australia relied on to educate its pupils also worried her.
First of all, we have a financial scheme in place that heavily favours private schools with federal funds, despite the fact that the vast majority of pupils in our public schools do not receive funding that meets the resource threshold that the federal government set.
According to the report, private funding for Australia’s primary and secondary educational institutions in 2019 was nearly twice as high as the OECD average. The majority of those unofficial sources were families who paid fees.
Chris Bonnor, author of Waiting for Gonski and fellow at the Centre for Public Development, claimed that Australia’s system was resulting in a two-speed educational system. The bottom doesn’t really gain anything, he claimed, and neither does the top.
We’re looking at a continued fall in general student accomplishment in Australia, and this decline has been going on for two decades, if we continue to divide pupils in this way based on their familial privilege and money.
