Education to fuel a productive economy

Gonski is about the moral imperative, not just the money, Ministerial Committee on Ageing (NSW), Chair and Gonski Review of Funding for School Education, Panel Member, Kathryn Greiner AO has told CEDA's State of the State 2013 conference.

"All students must have access to an acceptable international standard of education regardless of where they live or the school they attend," she said.

Ms Greiner said the Gonski Review found current funding arrangements were complex, opaque and lacked accountability.

"The funding of non-government schools and government schools was, to put it mildly, a bit of a dog's breakfast," she said.

While there were some pre-existing intergovernmental agreements on finances, "the range of programs and the funding streams themselves across all the government sectors to schools was extensive and often uncoordinated," she said.

Ms Greiner said from 2005-2010 the non-government education sector (both catholic and independent schools) saw the largest proportional increases in student numbers but the Government sector is still doing the heavy lifting.

Government schools are still educating 66 per cent of students and in 2010 36 per cent of students from government schools were from the lowest quarter of the socio-economic disadvantage index, she said.

In addition, Government schools also comprised 85 per cent of indigenous students and 5.9 per cent of students with a funded disability, she said.

Academically, the mean outcomes of indigenous students are significantly lower than their non-indigenous peers - effectively two years behind - and lower than the OECD average, she said.

Ms Greiner said the aim of the Gonski reforms is to lift the outcomes of a greater number of students as previous international comparisons show "nobody was winning".

When compared internationally, not only have we regressed across the decade for reading and literacy, but we're failing to improve outcomes for both the top and bottom quartile of students," she said.

"The decline in performance at both ends of the achievement indicated that Australia needed to focus on raising performance across the board if it wants to improve its productivity and its competitiveness as a nation," she said.

"Unless our students have the capacity, even before they get to university, for innovation and change capacities, they won't have the keys to the future.

"This is critical to Australia maintaining competitiveness in the global economy."

Minister for Higher Education and skills, Sharon Bird said: "As we embrace our place in the Asian century, tertiary education and skills will be instrumental in the continued transformation of the Australian economy and indeed in the prosperity of its people."

The structure of the Australian economy has changed dramatically and is now dominated by services that demand a higher level of skills, she said.

"Australia must be equipped with education, knowledge and skills that we need, both to succeed as individuals and to contribute to a growing economy," she said.

While recent indicators put productivity growth at two per cent, the challenge is to sustain this growth over time, she said.

Ensuring Australia is prosperous is not just the responsibility of government, Ms Bird said.

"We must continue to ensure our higher education institutions, our governments, our industries, business communities and our peak organisations work together to make Australia as a whole more responsive to our changing economy," she said.

RMIT, Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Margaret Gardner AO said Australia must leverage its current advantages which will always be temporary in a globalising world.

"Stop worrying so much about our own backyard, work out what we do well and this (offshore education) is something we do well, and get behind it," she said.

Professor Gardner said Australia have successfully delivered offshore higher education for more than a quarter of a century and would be concerned about anything that undermined us taking further advantage of that situation.

University of Wollongong, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Paul Wellings CBE said: "The thing we're faced with as a country is that the competition is not here amongst ourselves, it's out there in the rest of the world."

Professor Wellings said Australia's research competitors are not just in the traditional universities in America or Europe but in South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong as they move into an innovative system.

"Internationalisation is likely to be broader and deeper and we need to make sure that our students here in Australia are connected to those opportunities, not just to go to the States and to Europe, but to work out how do we get them into Asia," he said.