Budget Part 2 - Education

I feel that this budget could be pivotal in the election campaign and I am therefore taking the liberty to scrutinise its essential features. Yesterday I argued that from my personal macroeconomic view, the budget was inappropriate given the stage in the economic life cycle.

Today I want to focus on the education "reforms" because Costello proclaimed it himself that this was an "education budget". Money has been thrown about all over the place.

For tertiary education, the thrust is to increase enrollments with:

- removing full fee caps
- a $5bn endowment fund that will generate $304m for investment in university infrastructure
- extending Youth allowance and Austudy for students enrolling in masters courses
- an increase in the Commonwealth scholarships.

For primary and secondary education:

- a $700 voucher system for private tuition for those students who do not meet numeracy and literacy standards
- a bonus for teachers who complete a numeracy and literacy refresher course in the summer
- private schools will get an extra $1.7bn while public school will receive only an extra $300m.

Where do I begin? I'll start with those things that will likely affect me and my work. The Government is continuing to kick teachers in the gut with the implied blame for poor results of students. The tuition reform is also just another step to towards the privatisation of the secondary education system.

Most teacher's do not need refresher courses, and it will do very little to improve the results of students. Why? The problem in schools has nothing to do with teacher skills nor with the students. The problem lies with a system of education that provides an environment of diminished capacity. The neglect of the public system by successive state and federal governments has meant that the public system is now a safety net with major rips in the cords.

The solution is to halve class sizes. Halve class sizes and everyone wins. The student wins because there is more time to have one-to-one classroom learning relationships with their teacher. The teacher wins because they would no longer have to spend half their time on classroom behaviour management and can therefore get back to proper teaching. The parents will win because social, physical and intellectual development of their children will improve. The economy will win because there will be a larger base of skilled workers thereby increasing its capacity.

The tertiary education system deserves a boost in spending. Universities have been stagnant as it has had to deal with the commercialisation of the tertiary education sector forced on to them by the Howard government.

Perhaps even more appalling is that the federal government has dramatically increased their funding of private schools. It is completely abhorrent to me that private schools receive this much money while public schools are suffering.

The motive for this education spending has become quite clear with the resumption of parliament: it enabled Costello and Howard to say, "the education revolution has happened and we delivered it not Rudd." It is purely a political move to nullify one of labor's policy strengths. Lets not forget that it was Costello and Howard that slashed and burned education as part of its zeal to destroy public debt in 1997.

The highlight of Latham's leadership was when he was able to force the Howard Government into reducing parliamentary pensions. Latham said, "if we can do this while in opposition, imagine what we could do in Government." Latham looked in control, Howard looked weak. Rudd and Swan should be doing the exact same thing here. Howard has stolen labor's thrust and labor should take ownership of it. They have failed to do so. I look forward to Rudd's reply.