What better snapshot of modern Australia than the news this week from Commonwealth Education Minister Jason Clare.
Why the Commonwealth even has an Education Minister remains a mystery. Education is, after all, constitutionally the responsibility of the states and territories. But thanks to Saint John Winston Howard AC’s (Always Chafing) centralising zeal, the Commonwealth hoards more than 80 per cent of tax revenue, reducing the states to little more than supplicants in a grant lottery.
So, what bold reform has Clare unveiled?
A plan to merge four federal agencies into one shiny new body – the Teaching and Learning Commission – while warning about high dropout rates in public schools.
A bureaucratic shuffle. A reshuffling of deckchairs on a ship that never touches the water. None of these agencies will ever meet a teacher, a parent, or a student.
You know the saying: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, administer. And those who can’t do anything at all end up in Commonwealth Parliament.
Meanwhile, we’ve known for years what actually works. Roland Fryer, one of the world’s most rigorous education researchers, identified five replicable practices that move the needle:
More instruction time, higher expectations, frequent teacher feedback, data-driven teaching, and intensive tutoring.
These aren’t theories.
They were tested in Houston, Texas, across 20 failing schools.
The district extended the school year by 20 per cent, hired hundreds of tutors, rebuilt leadership, retrained teachers, embedded data into daily lessons, and created a culture of ambition. The results were astonishing: four extra months of learning in primary math, nearly eight months in secondary schools – enough to erase the racial achievement gap within two years.
That is what works. Not commissions. Not Gonski reports. Not more money siphoned through bureaucracies where effectiveness is inversely proportional to the number of consultants. And certainly not the musings of David Gonski, whose corporate record speaks for itself.
But such reforms will never happen here. Not in Australia. Not under a Labor government tethered to teacher unions and public-sector patrons. Parents count only when they vote. Children, tragically, count for nothing at all.
The brutal truth is this: until we replace Canberra-based bureaucratic empire-building with real reforms that put students first, Australian education will keep sinking money, energy, and hope into a system designed to serve everyone but the child in the classroom.
