Boosting Investment in Education: BCA Policy Director Patrick Coleman Talks to Radio National’s ‘The National Interest’ Program

28 October 2007: Transcript of comments by BCA Policy Director Patrick Coleman to Radio National’s The National Interest program regarding the need for increased investment in education.

Peter Mares: Imagine a society where teachers are revered as the fundamental source of our ultimate prosperity. And we’re parents encourage the brightest children to enter this noble profession. Imagine a society in which the best school teachers are paid $130,000 a year; sound like a pitch from the head of the Teachers Union – in fact it’s the vision of business leader Michael Chaney in his final speech as president of the Business Council of Australia.

Mr Chaney wants to see an extra four billion dollars invested in schools, because he says education drives economic and social prosperity. Unfortunately Mr Chaney himself wasn’t available to discuss his ideas, but joining me in his place is the Business Council’s policy director for education, skills and innovation, Patrick Coleman. Patrick Coleman welcome to the National Interest.

Patrick Coleman: Hello Peter, good to be with you.

Peter Mares: From reading Mr Chaney’s speech it appears that the Business Council would have liked to see the major parties commit some more money to education rather than give it all away in $30 billion worth of tax cuts?

Patrick Coleman: Well the Business Council and the business leaders who participate in our policy committee on education have identified school education as a very important priority. And we do believe there is a case for increased investment in education.

And as Michael Chaney mentioned in his speech, he believes and the Business Council believes a particular priority needs to be on supporting the teaching profession because the research we’ve looked at, in conjunction, particularly with the Australian Council for Educational Research, shows that the single biggest difference that you can make to improving the quality of education is to support the teaching profession, and to be attracting the very best and brightest people into teaching and to be keeping them in the classroom teaching.

Peter Mares: Supporting the teaching profession seems to translate in Michael Chaney’s speech into paying them more money.

Patrick Coleman: We thought the Business Council would put forward for consideration is a particular proposal to reward excellent teaching and we have identified that the opportunity of increased salaries is a way to reward excellent teaching and to give an incentive for the very best teachers to remain in the classroom.

And so what Michael was suggesting was the opportunity for a proportion of teachers to earn up to twice their salary in return for meeting excellence criteria in relation to teaching. In proposing that idea, we fully appreciate this is something that we’d need to work out how we go forward with that by talking to governments and particularly talking to the education sector itself.

Peter Mares: Well of course the idea of performance pay for teachers has been around; it’s been mooted a bit in recent months. Teachers themselves are opposed to it although I think plenty of teachers would be attracted by the idea of $130,000 a year. But I mean how do you measure who’s a good teacher, how do you assess it, that’s the problem isn’t it?

Patrick Coleman: Well I think one of the starting points is, that we need to be clear about what we are talking about and what Michael Chaney did refer to in his speech was rewarding excellent teaching which we think needs to take into account a broad range of criteria. And one of the things that Mr Chaney did suggest was that there needs to be some input from principals and input from perhaps peers.

Peter Mares: Well in fact he’s suggesting the principal should have more autonomy.

Patrick Coleman: Yes that’s right. In fact the Business Council suggested principal autonomy is something that would help as one of a range of things, help improve our school education system. Because we do think it would help if principals have more room to move in making decisions in relation to what goes on in their schools. We think they’re a bit constrained at the moment.

Peter Mares: The other big thrust of Michael Chaney’s speech was the need to expand participation in the mainstream economy as he put it. And he spoke specifically about indigenous Australians, about 300,000 young people who’ve fallen out of the education system and fallen out of the employment system as well. Really, they’re unemployed or under employed.

It sounded in many ways more like the kind of thing we’d hear from a welfare agency than from the – you know a captain of industry.

Patrick Coleman: This is very much – this issue of the participation fully in rewarding careers of young people and people from disadvantaged backgrounds is something that business people are very concerned about, and one of the reasons why we’ve given this high priority to education policy and to workforce participation policy.

And the reason that business leaders have come to be so interested and be putting forward ideas in this area is that they see people coming through the other end of the education system. So they see graduates coming out looking for jobs but they don’t quite have the right skills and qualifications that are needed for the jobs that are there in the economy at the moment.

And so it is – I think they look at a situation that we have Australia is a very – in one sense prosperous country at the moment, we’ve enjoyed 16 or 17 years of continuous economic growth, yet we have this situation where a large number of people are not able to fully participate. And I think they look at this picture, not only as business leaders but as members of the community, and think that we’re missing an important opportunity to have an even better country than we have at the moment. And we should be taking steps to address that.

Peter Mares: Well Mr Chaney says, and I’m quoting again, ‘Many of the commitments and promises in this election are likely to benefit those who already part of the mainstream economy.’ He also says or asks, ‘Will there ever be a better time than this, the height of the resources boom, to tackle entrenched disadvantage?’

I mean it’s actually an implicit criticism of both the major parties for squandering the benefits of the resources boom on a bidding war at the election rather than using those funds for more fundamental and far reaching reforms and investment in things like education.

Patrick Coleman: As much as anything I think the Business Council’s been saying that perhaps there’s an onus on everyone and that includes business, that includes the community and that includes governments to be looking to do better in this area. Because in terms of the growth that we’ve experienced and as the quote that you just were referring to from Mr Chaney emphasises, we are in a very strong position economically, therefore we do have this opportunity and we perhaps should be concentrating more in our policies on how we can increase participation and make a greater commitment to do that.

And therefore we see education policies and we see the opportunity for supporting people to make the transition from not working, from perhaps coming from disadvantaged situations, to be able to do that. We should have an opportunity to do that now.

And we still think that there is that opportunity to do that but it will require a serious commitment from governments, from business, from the community sector.

Peter Mares: Patrick Coleman, thanks for your time.
 
Patrick Coleman: Thank you Peter, you’re welcome.