Robert Menzies got excellent political bang for his buck when, 50 years ago this year, he put the Commonwealth decisively into the field of education. He served not only the national interest, and his own immediate political interests, but successive Coalitions by earning the undying gratitude of Catholics hitherto very reluctant to sup with those on the conservative side of politics.
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Until 1963, neither state nor federal governments contributed to the cost of educating the 540,000 Australian schoolchildren not going to government schools. Nor did the Commonwealth kick in, other than by general subvention, to the cost of educating the 1.7 million children at state schools. The Commonwealth's contribution to children's education was confined to schools in Canberra and the Northern Territory.
About 20 per cent of the non-government schoolchildren went to reasonably well-heeled private schools, but most were at poorly resourced and staffed Catholic systemic schools, maintained by parish fund-raising. Traditionally, their parents had voted Labor, but successive state Labor governments were scared to help Catholic schools for fear of re-exciting the (then) always smouldering reservoirs of sectarian hatred. But Labor had split in the 1950s, and a significant and largely Catholic rump was preferencing the Coalition over Labor by way of trying to force the remnant to its view of the dangers of communism and alliances with leftist elements.
Menzies' move - first with grants for science blocks, later with direct state aid to non-government schools - rewarded those preferences and helped keep the split alive.
In the days of Menzies, there were only a few Catholics on the conservative side of politics: state aid smoothed a transition which sees today a Coalition led by, and dominated by, Catholics.
But it is far from clear that big Labor spending on education has ever earned it a political dividend, mostly because of its ineptitude in explaining what it has done.
A decade after Menzies, Gough Whitlam doubled Commonwealth spending in the field. A decade later, a new Labor government doubled it again; and, about 14 years later, so did a Rudd-Gillard government.
In 1963, the total cost to governments - state and federal - of education, from preschool, schools, technical and further education and universities, was about $400 million - about $5.6 billion in today's terms. The Commonwealth was putting in about $42 million - about $600 million in today's terms.
Today the total expenditure by governments on education is about $75 billion. Commonwealth spending is near $40 billion, and it is contemplating a major fresh investment along the lines of the Gonski report.
But as it searches for money, it has walked into headlong conflict with the states.
The federal government deserves credit for increasing access to education for the disadvantaged and major fresh resources going into the field. It can also claim some credit for seeding some subject ideas. But it's hard to see it has made much difference in promoting its ideas about what should be taught, or how, in seeking national approaches, curriculums or standards, or in transforming educational inputs into actual outcomes.
Over the years, various ministers have declared that we need more students studying languages, or mathematics, or science, or history, or music, but state enthusiasm for such projects has been only in proportion to the amount of money being flashed around while it is being flashed around. Virtually all such subjects are now studied by fewer students than before.
It has been pretty much the same with various relics of the culture wars, such as Aboriginal studies, environmentalism, peace, or civics, the Howard triumphalist version of Australian, British and Christian history, or, most ludicrously (from Brendan Nelson) the worship of the Australian flag.They usually had existed in vestige anyway, long before politicians got onto the eternal soapbox of denouncing falling standards and the need to focus on basics, such as reading and arithmetic.
One reason why is that the federal government has little in the way of professional expertise about the education of schoolchildren. Neither Julia Gillard nor Peter Garrett has any expertise in education, however passionately they may feel about it being a good thing.
But nor does the federal Education Department. Few in it have a background in the actual provision of education, the devising of curriculums, or the management of children or teachers. It they do, that expertise is not why they are there.
The department knows much about education funding, the collection of input and output data, equity considerations and demography, how to manage contracts, audit and the preparation of equal opportunity statements. But it is run and organised, like other departments these days, on general skills, able to be equally deployed in managing a quarantine desk or the acquisition of an Army tank, not for a honed and developed knowledge of paedology.
With education everyone has an opinion, not least about technical and professional matters (such as the right way of teaching children to read). But the opinion of almost all people in the bureaucracy (and in Parliament House) has no more weight than most, if a lot less than people in schools.
All the more so when so many politicians betray the lack of depth of their understanding of education matters by resorting to crude slogans, pandering to sectional prejudices (such as resentment of teachers) or gimmicks and PR stunts.
There are things to be achieved by national uniform standards in education - not least in facilitating the mobility of the workforce - but the value is exaggerated, particularly when there is, as ever, a pronounced federalist tendency to settle for the lowest common denominator.
Likewise, there is a lot of work to be done in improving base levels of literacy and numeracy among the bottom 25 per cent of students. But almost everything dwelt on as evidence of the need - not least the silly NAPLAN data - is a distraction from improving the quality of teaching which, with the improvement of parents, is the only thing able to make a difference.
Likewise is the obsession with testing. A good deal should be done about the pay and rewards for teachers, but a Labor government has not developed its idea on this beyond the silly ideas of Julie Bishop.
Rudd proposed that the solution to everything was a laptop for every student. Gillard was his John the Baptist. But experts know that it would be better, right now, if every one of them was smashed. The deference paid - not by educationalists but by politicians and spin doctors - to the nostrums of Yankee carpetbaggers likewise emphasises the real: it is our politicians, not our schoolchildren, whose literacy and numeracy are so poor. There is no Australian problem in school education that is not 500 per cent worse in the very best American school system.
Jack Waterford is Editor-at-Large.
