The Coalition's education policy pushes 'autonomy' and 'independence' as keys to improved schools. But this privatisation plan will only help to further entrench difference and halt any upward social mobility in the education system, writes David Zyngier.

In his autobiography Battlelines, Tony Abbott lays bare his loyalty to the privatisation of schools, hospitals, transport and the provision of government services.

The private sector is good - he seems to be arguing - and the public sector is bad.

In the book Abbott advocates for federal government control of state schools with a view to privatising them.

Therefore it should be no surprise that the Liberal Party policy Real Solutions (page 40) pledges to:

Put parents, principals and school communities, not unaccountable bureaucrats, in charge of determining how their school will be run to improve performance [and] … work with the States and Territories to encourage State schools to choose to become independent schools, providing simpler budgeting and resources allocation and more autonomy in decision making by instilling a 'students come first' culture amongst staff and ensuring the delivery of better education outcomes at the local school level.

"Autonomy" and "independence" are codes for privatisation that will further entrench difference; promoting privilege, hierarchy and social disadvantage and halting any upward social mobility within our education system which is already struggling to delivery equity as Gonski found.

Schools that might benefit from more autonomy are the very ones that need the least help. Autonomy, then, is a means for dismantling public schooling and freeing it from what the Liberal Party term vested interest groups - the teacher unions - that has been part of the economic and political philosophy of the Liberal Party since the 1990s.

There has been an Australia-wide push for greater accountability, choice and autonomy for schools that was accelerated by Julia Gillard as minister for education in the first Rudd government.

Under the neo-liberal spell of Joel Klein, then chancellor of the New York City department of education (2002-2011), Australian education became an experimental playground of neo-con policies including competition, assessment and privatisation.

The development of the MySchool website, NAPLAN testing and performance pay for teachers all owe their origins to Gillard's neophytic acceptance of the illusory and fraudulent claims of lasting education reform that Klein brought to New York education.

Victoria has long had the most devolved public education system in Australia, starting during the era Jeff Kennett was premier from 1992-1999.

While there are trials of increased devolution in Western Australia and Queensland, they tend to involve only a limited number of schools rather than the system-wide changes made in Victoria in the 1990s.

In Queensland, Campbell Newman's Independent Public Schools may be what the Opposition has in mind where:

Independent Public Schools will have greater freedom to shape their own strategic direction and make decisions which will directly benefit their students. They will have the ability to work directly with local businesses, industry and community organisations.

But even in Queensland independence does not include school councils making operational decisions about the use of teaching or learning resources at the school, about the individual teaching style used at the school, having control of funds, entering into contracts, or acquiring, holding or disposing of property.

The rationale to justify the drive for more school autonomy is driven by a misguided belief that it improves student results.

Yet the research consensus is that this link cannot be made.

Victoria, which led the world in increasing autonomy, has not performed above New South Wales, which was centralised until recently.

The proposition that the introduction of a more extreme form of autonomy, like charter schools in the USA, will make the difference is not supported by the evidence.

While the film Waiting for Superman, extolled the virtues of these newly independent schools, a Stanford University charter school study suggests very little difference in results between traditional public and charter schools, though impoverished students do seem to do somewhat better at them. This needs to be weighed against their negative impact on systemic equity.

The Liberal policy therefore appears to be driven more by ideology and economics rather than educational outcomes.

Real Solutions reiterates the mantra of "more choice for parents" but it difficult not to come to the view that the intent of conservative governments is to fracture and weaken the public system. As a result its role as the universal provider, boosting market competition through taxpayer support of private schools, is undermined.

While Abbott recently back-flipped on the new federal funding agreements with the states, this is only for 2014.

Liberal policy will continue the Howard model, discredited and rejected as socially unjust and unfair by the independent review chaired by David Gonski.

A new study by The Grattan Institute categorically found that more competition among schools or greater autonomy has not raised the performance of Australian students.

The research concludes that providing more information about schools through websites like MySchool, public funding to support reduced private school fees or increasing the capacity of high-performing government schools does little to increase school competition or lift student performance.

The Senate education committee has also rebuffed the Coalition on the benefits of school autonomy and says that there is no clear evidence that greater school autonomy leads to better student performance and recommends more research on its impact.

The Senate report should embarrass the Coalition's education spokesman Christopher Pyne who has put school autonomy at the centre of the Coalition's education policy. This criticism of Coalition policy is even more significant considering a majority of the Senate education committee are Coalition members. The Committee's report on Teaching and Learning says:

"...it is unclear whether school autonomy ultimately improves student outcomes... Clearly, further research into school autonomy and its impact on student performance is required" [p.47].

The most comprehensive review of the evidence published in Australia concluded that the weight of research evidence is that greater school autonomy in budgeting and staffing has little to no effect on student results.

This is not just a matter of school 'ownership' but of the social values inherent in universal public schooling.

Autonomy for non-government schools allows them to raise hurdles such as compulsory fees or religious affiliation and only enrol students from families that can scale those hurdles.

Autonomy for public schools must include the obligations to not discriminate on these grounds.

The Real Solutions education policy fails to recognise the real challenges Australia's school system faces and it makes no serious attempt to address them.

David Zyngier is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. View his full profile here.

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