The teaching system needs more than money and smaller classes

The work of primary teachers has especially suffered, as noted in the Vinson Report: “At the primary level, the plethora of learning outcomes, often repeated in different KLA documents, is said to be almost overwhelming”.

Why not reduce the “crowded curriculum” by concentrating on essential learning. Better still, instead of making teachers design their own school-based programs why not, as they do in successful overseas countries, provide succinct and easy to follow syllabi that can actually be implemented at the local level.

Secondly, greater freedom and flexibility must be given at the school level. While some argue that traditional approaches to teaching are better suited to the industrial age, the reality is that a centralised and rigid industrial relations system is certainly obsolete.

Why not give school principals, and their school councils, the power to better reward successful teachers? Instead of teacher unions and the government controlling working conditions “best practice” suggests that it is by empowering those at the local level that real improvement occurs.

Instead of having a “one size fits all approach” many principals argue that schools should be given the freedom to decide class sizes in a way that best suits their individual needs. Schools should also be able to "hire and fire" staff and to give incentives to better reward performing teachers.

Finally, as a community, we need to ask whether too many demands are being placed on schools. Again and again, teachers complain they are being asked to be welfare workers, counsellors, psychologists and to cover topics as diverse as bike education, healthy eating, sex education and emotional wellbeing.

Parents need to take greater control of their children and teach them discipline and respect for their elders. Again, to quote from the Vinson Report: “the difficulty of handling unruly and abusive students was a serious source of distress and reduced satisfaction”.

As the drift to non-government schools demonstrates, many parents are prepared to pay considerably more for their children’s education. Taxpayers should be prepared to do the same for government schools.

The condition, though, is to remove “provider capture”, where unions, bureaucracies and the government control what happens and to truly empower those at the local level. Teachers should also be freed to get on with the job and to do what they love, that is to actually teach.