Education Revolution Announced

Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution in our Schools.

COAG’s Agenda for Productivity Reform

The Australian Government, through COAG, has committed to working with State and Territory Governments to lift Australia’s productivity through an ambitious reform agenda in early childhood development, schooling, and skills and workforce development.

Following its meeting on 20 December 2007, COAG established seven high level working groups, each chaired by an Australian Government Minister with senior public servants from the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments, to progress its 2008 work agenda. The Working Group on the Productivity Agenda for education, skills, training and early childhood development (PAWG) is taking forward COAG’s education reform agenda.

The objectives of the PAWG are to:

• pursue substantial reform in the areas of education, skills and early childhood development;
• deliver significant improvements in human capital outcomes for all Australians; and
• strengthen Australia’s economic and social foundations through the education reform agenda.

A key outcome from the work of the PAWG was the development of a national framework for education reform, which was endorsed by COAG at its meeting on 26 March 2008.

For the first time all Australian governments have agreed on a common framework that includes a comprehensive set of aspirations, outcomes, progress measures and future policy directions that will guide education systems across the nation, building on the initiatives currently underway across States and Territories.

These agreed aspirations and outcomes are informing the current efforts of the Working Group on the details for the new funding arrangements between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories for education. Using this framework, COAG will also clarify responsibilities for schooling between the State and Territory governments and the Australian Government. The policy directions agreed by COAG identify the key areas for collaborative national reform. They ensure that flexibility at the jurisdictional level is coupled with an evidence-based approach that clearly links to the agreed outcomes.

The framework also focuses clearly on the needs of disadvantaged Australians, to ensure that government action is making a real difference to their lives. Most importantly, all governments have already agreed to a set of definitive, measurable targets that will guide the actions of policy makers and program managers. These targets will also provide the basis for true accountability by governments to the community.

They are:

• Universal access to early learning will be provided for all children in the year before formal schooling by 2013.
• All Indigenous four year olds in remote Indigenous communities will have access to a quality early childhood education program in five years.
• The gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five years will be halved within a decade.
• The gap in reading, writing and numeracy for Indigenous students will be halved within a decade. 12 The Case for an Education Revolution in our Schools By 2020, Year 12 or equivalent attainment will have risen to 90 per cent,
• and the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous attainment will have been halved.
• By 2020, the proportion of Australians aged between 20 and 64 without qualifications at the Certificate III level and above will be halved.
• By 2020, the number of diploma and advanced diploma completions will have doubled. The agreed targets focus on the most important goals for reform in education and training.

In particular, the targets focus all governments on the pressing and significant challenge of addressing Indigenous disadvantage.

Related Links

 Quality Education: A case for an Education Revolution in our Schools [PDF 842KB]

[Source: Quality Education]