Gillard and Rudd acting as bullies

The federal government are proposing changes to the way they fund independent (non-government) schools. The ALP think it would be better, and I agree, if private schools were told to disclose their sources of revenue in order to receive public money. It’s a good idea, given that private schools are able to choose a needs-based funding model where public schools are kept on a per capita funding model. Making schools disclose their funding sources will give parents more information about that school and allow them an opportunity to make a more informed decision.

I’m not so keen on the national curriculum model, though. I’m of the belief that diversity within the education system allows us to see what works so it can be replicated elsewhere. What’s more, schools will be able to cater to the needs of their students better if they’ve got a bit of wiggle room regarding what they can teach and the states can identify priorities for certain industries in the vocational section of high school education. One need only look at Western Australia’s terrible attempt to bring Outcomes Based Education to the senior English syllabus to realise that an Education Minister/Department has the potential to screw up the entire national system if we had a national curriculum.

What really gets me, though, is that the government are using their numbers in the House of Representatives to reject any Opposition amendments to the bill (Fielding voted with the Coalition to get them through). Christopher Pyne, the Liberals’ Education spokesperson, says that he doesn’t see how we need a national curriculum as a precursor to providing funding to private schools. The government have written to schools saying that the Liberals are holding up their funding. Pyne is right, the national curriculum should be separate from the funding until a national curriculum can be proposed, developed properly and introduced by the federal government. Until there’s a national curriculum, it’s ridiculous to tie its adoption to funding.

These are the sort of bully-boy tactics that we got used to under John Howard. I was hoping that Rudd’s style would be a bit more consensus based rather than hard headed and that the ALP would be willing to work with the other parties to get their legislation through rather than demanding that other parties get in line behind them and vote the way they’re told (lest Conroy accuse them of wanting to protect child molestors). Until Australian governments see the Senate as a chamber of review rather than an obstacle to every half-baked idea they think is going to rescue the nation, we will have a dysfunctional democracy. Hell, New Zealand have a unicameral parliament and the parties co-operate much more than they do here.