The start and finish of the first academic year under the Rudd Government's ''education revolution'' hardly turned students' worlds upside down. In fact, they could be forgiven for thinking it was business as usual with the exception of a lot of furious counting of old school computers followed by deliveries of some shiny brand new ones.
If a revolution was taking place it was through the Council of Australian Governments' and Education Ministers' meetings where unprecedented moves towards a unified national curriculum, more comprehensive reporting requirements and teacher quality were achieved. This is in stark contrast to previous relations under the Howard government where Labor state and territory governments opposed Commonwealth reforms as a matter of course. In fact, many of the Coalition's plans were not dissimilar to those proposed by Education Minister Julia Gillard, but the heavy-handed threat of withdrawing ongoing Commonwealth funding usually saw negotiations break down early.
This revolution in cooperation will make an impact on students in the coming years when they gradually find themselves learning core national subjects, sitting national exams, receiving more detailed and comparable report cards and perhaps even receiving a national university entrance score.
This year the National Curriculum Board has been beavering away deciding what the most important points of a national curriculum are. They have adopted a back-to-basics approach, recognising science and maths learning needs to be embedded early on and made as exciting as possible to encourage students to keep studying these subjects during high school and beyond. The new English curriculum will come as a blessed relief to several generations of parents who have watched their children progress through school without learning to spell or construct a sentence correctly. Whole-word recognition is out and old-style phonics (or spelling out each word) is in for the early primary years.
Teachers will play their part in the revolution, with the Rudd Government ploughing $500million into establishing a form of professional recognition and reward for the nation's best teachers and added financial incentives for them to work among the most disadvantaged students.
Combined with a recently announced push by ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr to move teachers on to a public service-style merit-based promotion scheme and boost salaries to the $100,000 level for the most talented teachers prepared to work in the most difficult schools, this may be the start of raising the maligned status of teaching within the community.
A visit last month by New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at the invitation of Gillard raised the spectre of league tables in the minds of many in the schools sector. Klein grades schools from A to D and those that fail for more than two years running get closed down. Gillard appears enamoured of Klein's approach but faces strong state and territory opposition to enabling direct comparisons of schools. At the final Education Ministers' meeting of 2008, held earlier this month, the issue appeared to be smoothed over by Commonwealth assurances that the new Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority would not produce league tables but reports which would compare ''like'' schools as well as students receiving detailed reports on their own achievement and improvement.
Far less smooth has been the roll-out of the Rudd Government's centrepiece education policy, a $1billion pre-election promise to provide a computer for every student from Years 9-12. Budgeting at just $1000 each, it was apparent to the states and territories pretty early on that, in its excitement to win the election, the Labor Party had forgotten to factor into the price things such as cabling, electricity, technical support and the like.
It was the first sign of a breakdown in cordial wall-to-wall Labor relations when NSW pulled out of the great computer hand-out in September, saying it would not wear the add-on costs of a federal election promise.
The issue was partly resolved last month when a review, headed by Finance Department chief Paul Grimes, consulted the states and territories, independent and Catholic schools, and decided $2500 was a more realistic price to pay.
Thus a $1billion election promise has now blown out to $2billion, but it seems to have placated the states and territories for now.
Less embarrassingly but similarly underfunded, the ''Trades Training Centres'' promised new state-of-the-art vocational education facilities in every high school, but this initiative was budgeted at $1million a school. Most realise this won't stretch to much and it is likely the policy will lead to school clusters banding together and pooling their money more like trade training centres for every 10th school.
The most truly revolutionary occurrence in the education year has been the just-announced results of the Bradley Review of Higher Education.
Recommending student-centred or voucher funding as well as an almost $6billion injection into universities, Bradley has also advocated significant boosts for students claiming Austudy and Youth Allowance.
While vouchers remain a controversial aspect of the report, universities have joyously embraced her recognition that they are chronically underfunded and student fees are already too high. The Rudd Government is due to make its response in February.
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