Here comes another 2020 vision

I need to beg forgiveness from the outset. The commentary in OLO this month has focused on how we can produce a clever country. I want to take a different tack. In a forthcoming book Jane Caro and I speculate a little on what schools in 2020 might look like, from the perspective of a mum seeking a school for her son (Jared) who is good with his hands – edu-speak for being strong on gross motor skills but a tad deficient in other directions.

If anything, the weight of concerns in recent times has been about the Jared's of this world: how their underachievement is doing us in, what we should do to lift their level of achievement.

Getting back to our story, mum soon finds that Jared's attributes aren't keenly sought after by the schools within reasonable reach. The nearest school charges fees, another was closed down years ago and another made selective. Yet another was an independent public school that couldn't cater for his special needs (sound familiar?). Scratch the music academy and all that is left is the comprehensive school near the shops – but she doesn't want him in with that crowd.

Nowhere to go. So much for choice. So much for almost three decades of constant and often manic school reform seeded by the neo-liberals and driven by successive governments urged on by compliant commentators.

It isn't working: we are not creating schools which provide even comparable quality and opportunities for all our kids.

And there is more evidence and commentary that maybe, just maybe, this isn't entirely the fault of the schools. The couple of years leading up to the Gonski review saw increasing concern, not only on within-school reform but on how we can fix things outside the school gate as well - especially the way in which we provide and fund schools.

All other factors being equal, which they clearly are not, the Gonski recommendations have the capacity to rescue Australia from the coming decade of mediocre school performance, with all the increasingly obvious social and economic implications.

But it probably won't happen, so let's go straight to the year 2020 and look back, half seriously, at what 'did happen' between now and 2020 - and why we became even more, 'The Stupid Country'. http://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/isbn/0868408069.htm (I know this is another book advertisement but we really did warn about our possible futures).

2012 What did happen, all those years ago, in 2012? PISA test results (actually released in 2013) confirmed that our low-SES fifteen-year-olds (not unlike Jared) were two to three years behind high-SES students. The Gillard Government's implementation of the Gonski recommendations was delayed after a campaign by non-government school groups – following a time-honoured process of subverting sound reform.

2013 The new Abbott government wasted no time in linkingteacher salaries to measurable student outcomes. Teachers gradually stopped doing things that couldn't be measured. All public schools were made autonomous and private school fees made tax deductable. A new mega corporation of Rupert Murdoch, Joel Klein (remember him?) and Michael Gove (the Tory education secretary) was given a contract to run 800 for-profit schools in Australia. To find savings, all public secondary schools with less than 300 students were closed. The Gonski recommendations were further delayed.

2014 There was a major moral panic about the physical fitness of students. Fitness was tested by a NAPLAN-style measure and the scores listed on My School. The Fairfax press obligingly produced a league table. Due to lack of time in the teaching day music disappeared from the curriculum. Professor John Hattie analysed 314 pieces of research to show that quality teaching matters more than everything else. A new bureaucracy to help parents choose schools was established, with choice consultants appointed to every district.

2015 PISA tests showed that low-SES fifteen-year-olds were now well over three years behind high-SES students. To address this growing crisis NAPLAN tests were set for students in Kindergarten – and school funding was made contingent on schools doing better. Christopher Pyne was replaced as education minister by Tim Hawkes, brought in via a Senate vacancy. The Grattan Institute showed that the Philippines had overtaken Australia in PISA because all their school students sat in neat rows.

2016 John Hattie analysed 5,639 pieces of research that proved quality teaching matters. Prime Minister Joyce and Governor-General Howard signed school voucher funding into law. The Gonski recommendations were quietly abandoned after The Australian reported that a panel member had once used an official car for a private purpose. Five school principals were charged with cheating in the NAPLAN tests. A new bureaucracy, Fair Test Australia, was set up to administer the tests. A Herald-Sun exclusive revealed that 50% of kids were below average.

2017 Taking a different tack, the Productivity Commission pointed to misplaced school reform as the reason behind Australia's skill shortage, lack of competitiveness and rising welfare costs. The Joyce Government responded by implementing a 'no child left behind or else' policy and mandated that 10% of schools would become discipline schools. My School included a new index showing the number of children chastised by teachers in each school; the Fairfax press obligingly produced a discipline league table. A Daily Telegraph exclusive revealed that 70% of kids were now below average

2018PISA tests showed that low-SES fifteen-year-olds were now over four years behind high-SES students and also were doing very badly in foreign languages. 300 hours of language were mandated for all schools. Visual arts disappeared from the curriculum. The Grattan Institute showed that Malawi had overtaken Australia in PISA because all their kids wore school uniforms. The maths curriculum was altered to explain more about averages.

2019 School attendance and retention rates seriously declined amidst widespread concern about disconnected kids - highly publicized research developed by the ACER showed that civic-mindedness was weak in schools. The Bernadi Government said that it would no longer be soft on civics and decreed that NAPLAN would test civics and niceness. Drama slipped off the curriculum. John Hattie analysed 23,918 pieces of research that proved beyond doubt that quality teaching matters.

2020 Now this is different: Education historians have just unearthed a copy of the Gonski review from DEEWR archives. The new government has declared that it will implement the lot because nothing else over the last ten years had has worked.

So there you go. Yes, some of it is fanciful and I've thrown in some pet aversions. But when you think about it, many of the listed events have been tried in various places without success: policy driven by moral panic and the media, privatization in its various guises, reward and punishment funding, test-driven change. We haven't introduced some of them yet in Australia, but give us time. They are alive and well (and selectively researched) overseas just waiting to land in Oz.

We don't really have to be locked into Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We know what successful school systems do and some of this is quite different. And yes, much of what we have to do differently has to happen in schools. Some ideas about this have been developed in other contributions to OLO this month. My commitment to doing things differently within schools is best reflected in my work for Big Picture Education Australia. http://www.bigpicture.org.au/

And despite some of the above we need to value the work done by people such as John Hattie and Ben Jensen, but alongside other perspectives as well. Doing schooling better is about fixing schools on the outside as well as the inside http://inside.org.au/gonski-the-game-changer/. We can't afford to have an ever-growing underclass of Jareds.

Chris Bonnor is a fellow of the centre for Policy Development and co-author (with Jane Caro) of What Makes a Good School (forthcoming, July 2012).