In the national gloom of Gradgrind schooling policy, South Australia is a flicker of light.
The Malinauskas government came to office in 2022 promising a “we’re different” approach to schooling. By the end of that year, after much consulting, reviewing and surveying, it released a “visionary document” setting out a “bold vision” for a system that is not just “world-class” but “world-leading.”
In the place of the familiar vocabulary of “performance,” “outcomes,” “standards, “accountability,” “direct instruction” and the “science of learning” we find talk about “wellbeing,” “fulfilment,” “belonging and safety,” “curiosity,” “learner agency,” “empowered leadership” and a system that “prioritises learning and wellbeing.”
In the short two years since the plan’s release, a youngish minister (helped along by being a father of three children and almost as telegenic as his premier) and his left-field chief executive (a Cambridge biological chemist who came to the job via science education) have shown every sign they mean it.
They have a lot going for them: a strong government and a weak opposition in a less than usually acrid political culture; a small school system (a quarter the size of New South Wales); a tradition of progressivist thinking about schooling, as befits the “paradise of dissent”; a teaching force “at breaking point” and aching for change; a low base from which to start (the usual “long tail” of student attainment, and widespread student disaffection); national reform that hasn’t worked; and not much to beat elsewhere.
The minister and his chief executive have placed their bets on being able to make a difference from within an unsympathetic “national approach” promoted by Canberra and the confines of just one of the three school sectors; on a 120-year-old bureaucracy being able and willing to promote “empowered leadership” in schools; on changing students’ working lives by changing teachers’ minds about how they should teach; on staying in office long enough and making changes big enough to shape the longer run; and on being able to do all that by changing the culture but not disturbing the structure of the sectors, governance and work in schools.
My bet: in four or five years’ time, and with a bit of luck, the long tail will be a bit shorter, a measurable proportion of students will be less unhappy about life at school, the social segregation of schooling won’t be much worse, and most teachers will be less resentful and angry but will still be teaching more or less as they do now.
My hope: that those responsible for such modest but worthwhile improvements will be pleased but not satisfied. With that in mind I have taken the liberty of drafting a speech for delivery by the South Australian premier in 2030. It might be read as what a government could do if so minded; or as wishful thinking; or as an estimate of what it will take to get from where Australian schooling is to where it needs to be; or as posing a question: if not that, then what?
REMARKS ON THE LAUNCH OF THE GREEN PAPER ON THE FUTURE OF SCHOOLING BY THE PREMIER OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA, 30 JANUARY 2030
Today marks the beginning of another school year, and another big step toward a new era for schools and schooling in our state.
The green paper sets out the government’s provisional view of that future. It will be followed by a white paper to be released on this day next year, after what will be, I hope, a period of intense and fruitful debate.
The government came to office in March 2022 with a new commitment to schooling and a different approach to its improvement. In the nearly eight years since then we have made encouraging progress in the academic basics as measured by NAPLAN, PISA and other tests, and in the larger tasks of schooling as measured by indicators developed here in South Australia. That evidence is summarised in the green paper.
Our approach has lifted morale in schools, attracted encouraging support from the South Australian community, and prompted a ferment of discussion and new thinking at all levels, including within the government.
Progress combined with new thinking suggests that we are now in a position to aim higher. We want to provide twelve safe, happy and worthwhile years for every child and young person. And we want to do it within a generation.
We have undertaken a root-and-branch review of what would be needed to deliver on that goal. Our conclusion is that the National Approach and its NSRAs (National School Reform Agreements) are unsuited to our circumstances.
We endorse the spirit of the national Mparntwe Declaration on what we should expect of schools, but we do not believe that we can make that a reality in this state within the confines of the National Approach.
We have received from the Commonwealth its conditional assent to our request to withdraw from the “national approach” and its many institutions and instruments, and for all Commonwealth funding for all South Australian schools in our state to be pooled and provided as an untied grant to the state.
The Commonwealth’s final acceptance is conditional on broad endorsement by the South Australian public of the proposals set out in the green paper, on the Commonwealth’s approval of arrangements for the distribution of funding to schools in all three sectors, and on finalising appropriate accountability mechanisms. If accepted, these arrangements will simplify governance and make clear where responsibility lies.
We also propose an approach to reform and schooling different in several respects from the National Approach.
We have concluded that to be satisfied with incremental improvement is to accept that okay schooling is okay. It means giving up on those at the end of the queuev who most depend on school.
Rather than aiming at incremental improvement in target areas, therefore, we propose a single goal, mentioned a moment ago: to provide every child and young person with twelve safe, happy and worthwhile years at school within a generation.
Reform, as we see it, is simply changing whatever needs to be changed to deliver the goal.
The green paper proposes a twenty-five-year plan, setting specific near-term reforms within the longer and bigger picture. A timeframe of around twenty-five years is taken as given in national defence planning, in mining and other industries, and in some of our own agencies.
Schooling is at least as complex as any of these. As we emphasised back in 2022, at the core of schooling are relationships, often complicated, often deeply embedded. Relationships and associated ways of doing things can’t be changed overnight, or on command from above. They must be worked through, over time, by all involved.
In governance, we propose an arm’s length and supportive relationship between schools and government rather than a system of compliance imposed in a direct line from the minister.
The great state education departments were established well over a century ago to provide a standard elementary schooling in every suburb, town and hamlet across a vast country. In this they were highly effective instruments of fundamental reform.
They are not so well suited to providing the extended and varied education we now expect and need.
Schools are not outlets. Each school or group of schools must find its own way within a supportive framework of expectations, resources and encouragement. I will outline specific proposals along these lines in a moment.
A whole-of-state approach: the sectors, faith-based and secular, have a long history in Australia, and we see that continuing into the future.
In the interests of making choice more equal, more widely available and more productive, and in the interests of pushing back on social segregation in schooling, we must move toward a more common basis in funding and regulation across the three sectors.
We would aim at delivering, over time, full public funding of the great majority of schools.
Most fundamentally — and here I speak as the mother of three school-age children — we must move toward organising each student’s learning program around their intellectual progress and their growth as individuals and as members of the community.
We emphasise that schools do not exist to provide teaching — or to distribute knowledge. They are places in which young people and adults come together as joint producers of learning and growth.
The green paper proposes that we aim to improve the productivity of schooling rather than focusing on “teacher effectiveness.” It proposes better ways of organising daily work in schools, rather than requiring teachers and students to work within a framework bequeathed by a distant past.
In the right circumstances, we believe, students can develop amazing capacities and can take much greater responsibility for the work of the school, including its educational work.
In making this crucial point I stress that the green paper sees “direct” or “explicit” instruction, as supported by the learning sciences and academic research, as a central component of an optimal approach. But we do not see it as the core organisational principle of the work of students and teachers.
I also emphasise that the green paper aims to build the capacities and rewards of teaching, and to build its deep satisfactions — but by working outward from change in students’ work, not vice versa.
We aim also to strengthen the hand, the capacities and the rewards of school leadership.
The first concern of the Green Paper is the character and quality of every student’s experience at school. The light on the hill: every student looking forward to going to school, every day.
The green paper does not discount the importance of outcomes, although we do suggest two things.
First, the impact of schooling on individuals, on groups and on the whole society is very much broader, more complex, more difficult to discern, and longer-lasting than those few currently focused on by tests of attainment.
And second, those twelve years are not just a preparation for something else. Children and young people are not simply adults in training. As parents well know, every child and young person demands and deserves respect for who they are as well as for who they may become.
Twelve years at school represents around one fifth of most working lives. If we can get that right, the rest will follow.
I referred a moment ago to specific changes in governance. We propose that the Education Department be reconstituted as a small Office of Education reporting to the minister, making way for two new institutions: a South Australian Commission for Schooling, or SACOS, and a Government Schools Authority. The green paper also proposes a new support and accountability unit within SACOS.
We propose that SACOS comprise five commissioners with a broadly representative mix of experience and affiliations but complete independence from them. It is proposed that the commission be responsible for making recommendations to the government as to funding, and for allocating funding to all schools.
An interim committee of the commission will lead and support public debate and discussion of the green paper, and develop the white paper for the government’s consideration.
I am delighted to announce that my predecessor, Mr Peter Malinauskas, has agreed to put his unmatched experience and expertise at the disposal of the interim commission as its chairman.
If proposed and then accepted by the government, the commission will lead the development of a twenty-five-year plan, and will drive, monitor and report on progress within the plan.
On the Government Schools Authority and the Support and Accountability Unit, I refer you to proposals outlined in the Green Paper.
In concluding, I thank the senior representatives of all three sectors and of student, teacher, principal and community organisations for their involvement in the development of the green paper and for their presence here today.
I thank particularly the leader of the opposition for her willingness, on behalf of her party, to support the process up to and including the publication of the white paper, with further cooperation of course contingent on the white paper’s content.
The green paper expresses a principle on which we can all agree: schooling is for everyone, and it is everyone’s concern. I commend it to you. •
