A lot more needed for an 'education revolution'

We must move slowly, but surely, towards a national curriculum. It must have achievable goals and allow flexibility between states, between public and private systems and between individual schools. A national curriculum must involve all the stakeholders: parents, teachers, teachers unions and administrators, the lay person, employers and the academic for both public and private schools. It must include a balance between creativity and skills.

The area in which federal government does already have responsibility is in teacher education. Here an allocation of money, to ensure that student teachers have a significantly increased amount of classroom practice under the guidance of inspirational teachers followed by mentoring in their first few years of teaching, will reap enormous future benefits.

It must recognise that little of this is going to be achieved within the first three years of government, especially when so little of worth has been left by the previous government. We need a ten-year, or even a 15-year, plan which, like Medicare to which so many people are committed, even a change of government could not undo its essential strategy.

And finally, if Kevin Rudd is really serious about the importance of education he must create a separate ministry for it. Why can we have three separate ministries for Ageing, Youth and Sport and Veterans’ Affairs and not a separate ministry for education? Gifted though she might be, it will be impossible for Julia Gillard to give this the attention it deserves, and tying it up with employment and workplace relations seriously narrows the focus of what a 21st century education should be.