PM Gillard's fabian fantasies undermine non-government schools

The national plan, in addition to mouthing platitudes about improving school performance by driving “continuous school improvement”, mandates that schools must ensure that “students engage with Asia”.

This Asia-centric focus continues in section 7 where the statement is made that every “school student will have significant exposure to studies relating to Asia across the curriculum”.

Ignored is that while geographically a part of Asia, Australia is a liberal, Western democracy and that the political and legal institutions that guarantee our freedom and prosperity are based on the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage and Western tradition.

One must also seriously wonder, given the bland and selective view of Asia promulgated by the government funded Asian Education Foundation, whether students will learn about the dark side of oppressive regimes in Asia such as China and Singapore.  Regimes where basic human rights are denied and oligarchies rule unchecked.

There is also much that is contradictory and impossible to achieve in the draft paper.  On one hand it states that school leaders “will have greater power to make decisions, to implement strategies to obtain the best outcomes for their schools and school students”.

At the same time, even though it doesn’t manage any schools or employ any teachers, the Commonwealth government is imposing a centralised, bureaucratic and intrusive regime on schools.

The statement that Australia, by 2025, will be ranked “as one of the top 5 performing countries based on the performance of Australian school students in reading, mathematics and science” is also unrealistic and simply a case of empty political rhetoric.

Primarily because the very things needed to ensure stronger performance, such as competition, diversity, autonomy and choice in education, are denied by a government determined to ensure that all roads lead to Canberra.