On being elected as leader of the then Opposition in 2006, and now as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has signalled education as a key policy issue. Mirroring then British prime minister Tony Blair's cry of education, education, education, Rudd and Julia Gillard define their Government's success in terms of overcoming disadvantage, raising standards and making Australia's education system more internationally competitive.
Over the past 12 months state and federal Labor-dominated governments, both through the Council of Australian Governments and the Ministerial Council for Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, have launched a raft of policy initiatives and funding agreements.
The list includes computers and trade centres for schools, a national curriculum, teacher accreditation and performance pay, school accountability, National Partnership programs in literacy and numeracy, and overcoming disadvantage and funding agreements for government and non-government schools.
The first point to be made about Rudd's revolution is that while the rhetoric sounds good employing, as it does, conservative slogans such as accountability, academic rigour, school choice and back to basics implementation has failed.
The cost of Rudd's election promise to deliver a computer to every senior school student has blown out by millions of dollars and the difficulties surrounding building, staffing and developing a curriculum for trade centres have quickly become apparent.
A second observation is that all roads lead to Canberra. Even though the Federal Government neither employs teachers nor owns schools, policy is highly centralised, top-down and bureaucratic.
Beginning in 2009, all schools will have to deal with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority; a National Schools Assessment and Data Centre; a national accountability and performance reporting framework; a National Partnerships program; a national curriculum (involving content and performance standards) and a National Partnership on Quality Teaching.
It's true that the Howard government tied initiatives such as A-E reporting and school flags to funding, but the Rudd Government has taken compulsory micromanagement to an even more intrusive and burdensome level.
Currently, Australian schools are free to implement a state-mandated curriculum or its equivalent. Under a Rudd regime all schools, government and non-government, will be forced to implement the yet-to-be-devised national curriculum, kindergarten to Year 12.
True, there will be some degree of flexibility in terms of teaching styles and shaping what is taught to local needs but, as a condition of funding, all schools will be made to teach a centrally prescribed curriculum, no matter how substandard or flawed.
Schools and teachers have every reason to be suspicious. Not only do the background and framing papers adopt a new-age and politically correct approach, but the curriculum development process has been captured by the very individuals and associations responsible for Australia's dumbed down outcomes-based education model of curriculum.
As a result of the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians and related MCEETYA Action Plan 2009-2012, schools will also have to comply with ALP-inspired policies related to overcoming disadvantage and to teach environmental, indigenous, multicultural and gender issues from a cultural-left perspective.
To achieve this, the Melbourne Declaration states that schools must provide schooling that is free from discrimination based on gender, language, sexual orientation, pregnancy, culture, ethnicity, religion or disability, and differences arising from students' socio-economic background or geographical location.
No doubt, as a condition of government funding, Catholic and independent schools will be pressured to adjust their enrolment procedures and curriculum to reflect the ALP's commitment to equity, social justice and acceptance of diversity.
Based on a call for increased accountability and transparency, all schools will also be forced to make public details related to finances, management, enrolment, staffing and educational philosophy and learning outcomes.
In addition to compliance cost, given the campaign against non-government schools being orchestrated by the Australian Education Union and Andrew Blair, the president of the Australian Secondary Principals Association, the likelihood is that such information will be used to reduce funding.
Rudd portrays himself as a staunch defender of parents' right to choose Catholic and independent schools. In one interview he even said that if parents were not happy with a school they should vote with their feet.
The test of the ALP's new-won commitment to choice will be the Government's position on the 2009 review of the Howard government-inspired approach to funding non-government schools, the socioeconomic status (SES) formula.
Over the past 12 months the Fairfax press, via The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, has a run a series of articles attacking the SES formula. Critics argue that non-government schools are over-funded and that the formula is inequitable and flawed.
Ignored is that one of the success stories of Australia's education system is the presence of a robust and diverse non-government school sector, especially in the ACT, where 42 per cent of students attend Catholic and independent schools.
Research suggests that non-government schools, based as they are on promoting competition, choice and diversity in education, not only best meet the needs and expectations of parents, but also achieve strong academic results.
Instead of Labor's empty rhetoric about accountability and raising standards, a real education revolution would involve freeing all schools, government and non-government, from provider capture.
Following the example of city academies in England and charter schools in the US, the policy should be one of giving schools the autonomy and flexibility to manage themselves and to best meet the demands of their communities.
If Rudd and Gillard are genuinely concerned about overcoming educational disadvantage, in addition to schools being made autonomous, vouchers or tax credits for school fees should be introduced.
Australia already has a de facto voucher system, where government funding follows the child to whatever non-government school is attended. On the grounds of equity and social justice, it makes sense if more parents are in a financial position to choose such schools.
Dr Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies and author of Dumbing Down.
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