OECD praises Coalition reforms

The Coalition welcomes the OECD report on Australia’s school system as it is endorses Coalition education policies of the past and our future directions in education, Christopher Pyne, Shadow Minister for Education said today.

“The report emphasises the importance of school autonomy and appropriately rewarding teachers - two important areas of the Coalition’s education policy,” Mr Pyne said.

“It also notes the National literacy and numeracy testing as an important and valuable reform in Australia, a key achievement of the former Coalition Government,” he said.

“Similarly the former Coalition Government initiated the National Professional Standards for Teachers which were endorsed in the report.

“However the report also contains several warnings and criticisms of the Government policy.

“It questions the effectiveness of the data collection and reporting on programmes worth billions of dollars under the Council of Australian Governments national partnership framework.

“This is a longstanding criticism which could lead to more waste and inefficiency. Improving reporting on the roll out and effectiveness of programmes must be a priority.

“Secondly, in praising the national curriculum the report unintentionally highlights the seeming inability of the Gillard Government to deliver on this promise. Widely derided, the curriculum is considered to be sub-standard by some education experts.

“With New South Wales and Western Australia refusing to start the curriculum until 2014, the full implementation of the curriculum is years away.

“The report echoes some of the long held criticisms of the Coalition on My School, that the use of raw NAPLAN data on the website without context causes more harm than good.

“The Coalition will look closely at the OECD analysis of Australia’s schools system in the lead up to the next election.

August 18, 2011

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