Toward an Understanding of the Similarities and Differences of Between Australian and Chinese School Education

Prof. Geoffrey RiordanUniversity of Canberra

Canberra, Australia

Paper presented at Institute of Schooling Reform and Development, East China Normal University and the College of Education, Guangxi

Normal University jointly sponsored conference:

“Educational Reform and Experience Sharing in Social Change”Guangxi Normal University

GuilinGuangxi Province, ChinaMay 25 – June 6, 2014

Abstract

This paper contributes to theme of this conference – sharing our experiences of educational reform and social change -- by providing an overview of the dimensions of school education in Australia. It identifies four key challenges that have been characteristics of school education in Australia: Quality, Distance, Equity and Deference and describes some of the measures that have been employed to address these challenges. The paper concludes with several ideas about how educators and researchers from Australia and China might work more collaboratively to better understand each other’s and our own schools. Based on this we may be able to develop effective strategies and programs to address the challenges we all face in providing a quality education for all young people in our countries.

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Introduction

I would like to start this presentation by thanking the conference organisers for their kind invitation to attend and present at this important conference. The conference topic includes the word “sharing”. In this paper I would like to share some observations about education in our two countries. I do not claim to be an expert of school education in China but I have learned some things during my many visits to China over the past decade. I believe that there is a great deal that we as educators and researchers can learn from each other, and also, that our schools and education systems can benefit from a deeper understanding of our respective approaches to school education. This paper will provide a description of the history and current provision of school education in Australia and then draw some comparisons between our two school education approaches. The challenges that we as educators and researchers in our two countries face are surprisingly similar. The paper will conclude with a consideration of these common challenges.

My first visit to China occurred in October 2004 when I presented a paper at the CCEAM conference that was being held at East China Normal University in Shanghai. Since then I have visited China more than 10 times. I have also read a great deal about China and Chinese education and have formed friendships with academics in several places in China. At my university I am well known for my deep interest in your fascinating country and in your education system in particular.

One of the things that I have come to appreciate is the similarity of schools, teachers and children in both our countries. I believe that educators and researchers from both of our countries can learn a great deal from each other through collaboration and sharing. During the past three years I have organized study tours for groups

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of teachers and principals from Canberra to visit China, to visit schools and talk with teachers. I have also organized for my colleagues to visit universities and begin research collaborations. The University of Canberra now works in partnerships with schools and universities in Harbin, Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Through the work we have done, several schools in Canberra have established their own partnerships and are working on plans for staff and student exchange.

Australians are interested in China. Chinese people have been living in Australia since the early 1850s. Australia has become a multi-cultural society and Chinese immigrants have made a significant contribution to our social, economic and cultural life. Australian educators and policy makers are particularly interested in Chinese education. We are well aware of the remarkable success of students in Shanghai in international tests. Over the past 10 years educators and policy makers in Australia have taken an increasing interest in PISA and TIMMS results. These have shown a steady decline in the performance of Australian students in the tests in which Shanghai students excel.

Both our former and current federal governments have encouraged learning and sharing in education between our two countries. The previous government produced the Asian Century White Paper (2012). This document acknowledged the growing shift in power and influence from the West to Asia and made numerous recommendations for future policy priorities. Among these was the need for Australian school children to know more about Asia, to be able to speak an Asian language and to gain the cultural understanding needed to ensure that our country was able to relate effectively to our Asian neighbours in the future. Specifically, the Asian Century White Paper recommended that all schools form a partnership with a school in Asia to assist in the development of

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understanding among the children in these schools and to encourage professional collaboration among teachers.

Our current government has introduced a program to support Australian university students spend part of their study in Asia. The program, called the New Columbo Plan, is designed to promote cultural awareness of Asia among Australian university students. Approximately 20 students from my Faculty at the University of Canberra are currently undertaking professional placements in schools in Shanghai. This program, called Asia Bound, has a similar objective and is designed to provide students with shorter periods of study in Asia.

It may be clearer now why Australians are interested in your country and in your schools. But why might Chinese educators and researchers be interested in Australian education? It may be that you too recognize the similarity of the challenges both our education systems face. Both of our countries are concerned with raising the educational outcomes of students in all schools, not just those in major cities. Further, both of our countries are challenged to cater for the learning needs of the children from minority communities, from disadvantaged backgrounds and with disabilities. As I will argue later in this paper, both of our countries have also imported many of the policies and teaching practices currently in use from the USA and England. It is as if we do not believe in our teachers and researchers and their capacity to develop our own, context specific solutions to the problems that we face.

Examining how our two countries address these common challenges within our different political, social, economic and historical contexts is likely to lead to a deeper appreciation of those features of our respective systems that are effective. There is also the potential

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that such research will identify country-specific practices that can, with modification, be applied to the other country.

The next section of this paper provides a brief overview of school education in Australia. This will provide you with some basic contextual information in relation to the suggestions for collaborative projects that will be presented at the end of this paper.

School Education in Australia

Australia is unique among western countries in that approximately 40% of its schools are non-government schools and approximately 35% of students in Australia attend non-government schools. The reason that Australia has such a large proportion of non-government schools is related to the long and complex story of the development of compulsory, secular education in Australia during the 19th century.

All schools are, however, subject to government regulation and the differences between government and non-government schools relate mostly to the issue of governance and the philosophy – usually religious – of the school. The majority of non-government schools offer an education within a particular religious tradition. In most other respects they are similar: they teach the same curriculum, their teachers all studied in public universities, they are funded to various extents by the government, comply with government policies and regulations and the students sit the same external exams and gain the same education credentials.

In Australia there are three levels of government: local, state and federal. Australia is comprised of six states and two territories. The territories have less autonomy than the states but in most respects

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operate as a state. The states and territories are responsible for the provision of school education. The Commonwealth provides a considerable amount of funding to schools, but has no legal authority to pass laws in relation to the operation of schools. Co-ordination of schooling across the country occurs through the Standing Council on School Education and Early Childhood (SCSEEC)1. SCEEC is comprised of the state, territory and federal ministers of education.

Table 1 provides detailed information about the number of schools in Australia. There is a total of 9, 427 schools in Australia. Primary schools cover the first seven years of schooling from kindergarten to Year 6. Secondary schools cover either Years 7 – 10 or Years 7 – 12. Combined schools cover kindergarten to year 12. Special schools cater for the learning needs of children with learning difficulties or who are in custody or in hospital.

Table 1: The Number of Schools in Australia

1 For information about SCSEEC, visit http://www.scseec.edu.au

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Table 2, below, presents the number of students enrolled in schools in Australia. These Tables show that 3.5 million students in 6,697 schools in Australia. By comparison, the Shanghai Education Commission (2011) reports that there are 1.3 million students enrolled in 1,622 schools in Shanghai.

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Table 2: Student Enrolments in Schools in Australia.

Challenges Facing Australian Education

In my view there are four challenges that have faced Australian Education throughout its short history: Quality, Equity, Distance and Deference.

Quality

The focus on quality is common across all school systems around the world. The emphasis on quality has been particularly apparent over the past 20 to 30 years as international measures, such as PISA and TIMMS, have provided a ready means of comparing student-learning performance among different countries. Notwithstanding the validity of these comparisons and the extent to which the tests

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they rely on accurately capture the richness and complexity of learning, there is no doubt that media and governments place great weight on these measures.

In Australia, quality has been addressed in terms of student learning outcomes, the curriculum, resource provision (funding, buildings, computers, etc.) and teachers. Teacher quality has been a particular focus in Australia over the past 20 years. There have been approximately 30 state and federal reports into teacher quality during that period. There is currently a major national review into teacher education. Over the past 10 years or so there has been increasing government regulation and attempted regulation of teacher education courses and student selection criteria. As a result of the deregulation of undergraduate university places that have allowed universities to enroll as many students as they choose in any courses that they choose and receive government funding for these students, there has been a massive increase in the number of students being admitted to teacher education courses. Some universities have lowered the academic requirements for entrants to such an extent that there is now widespread community concern about the academic ability of teacher education students. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL)2 has proposed that all prospective teacher education students undertake assessment to ensure that they are in the top 30% of the population in literacy and numeracy. Universities have argued that governments and employers should focus on the quality of the graduates and not what the graduates knew when they entered their teacher education courses.

The focus on pre-service teachers has been far greater than on the quality of practicing teachers. This has been partly addressed over 2 The AITSL website contains detailed information and copies of policy documents relating to teacher quality. It can be accessed here: http://www.aitsl.edu.au

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the past couple of years by the introduction of national standards for teaching. Developed by the AITSL the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers sets out seven dimensions of teaching practice at four levels of competence. Teachers are required to demonstrate the achievement of these standards at progressive levels throughout their career.

The introduction of a standards-based approach to teacher quality follows similar developments in other western countries. There is considerable academic debate regarding the effectiveness of standards to raise teacher quality and little research evidence to show the link between teachers’ attainment of these standards and student learning outcomes.

The issue of school funding has been a contentious matter since the full establishment of public education in the late 19th century. Prior to 1880, all schools received financial support from the state. In 1880 this ceased in most of Australia and was not returned until the early 1970s. Since then, the amount of state and federal funding has increased to the extent that the majority of non-government schools receive 80% or more of the funding per student that is provided to government schools. The history of funding has been divisive. Proponents of non-government schools claim that they are providing a public service through the provision of state mandated education and are entitled to more public funds. The proponents of government schools argue that they are underfunded and that if parents choose to send their children to non-government schools then they should pay more or even all of the cost of that choice.

In 2012 it appeared that a solution to this 130 year old problem had been achieved when the Gonski Report (2012). Commissioned by the federal government in 2010, the Gonski Report (2012) recommended that government funding for students in all schools

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be based on the educational needs of the child, rather than the sector of the school. The Report was well received by both government and non-government schools. The problem was that the recommendations required a significant increase in total funding by the federal and state governments. In the federal budget announced in early May this year, the new federal government has withdrawn support for the Review recommendations by reducing the future spending amounts planned by the previous government. It now seems inevitable that the problem of school funding in Australia will remain.

The focus on curriculum as a means to ensure the quality of schooling has long been a concern of governments. In 2010 the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA) was established. The main goal of ACARA was to establish a national curriculum. This has been partially achieved with curriculums in selected disciplines having been developed. The states and territories still retain the power to decide the extent to which they adopt the national curriculum. Given that Australia has a population of less than 25 million people and that the smallest education jurisdiction, the Australian Capital Territory, has a total population of less than 400,000, the absence of a national curriculum is very difficult to justify.

Finally, when attention is focused on student learning outcomes, there are clearly some major challenges for Australian education. The performance of Australian students on international tests has been on decline over the past decade. Ben Jensen (2012, p.9), in his extensive report on the performance of Australian students in PISA 2009, quotes OECD data that show that there has been a 13 point decline in the mean PISA reading score between 2000 and 2009. During the same period there has been a 5 point decline in

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the United States, a 7 point improvement in Hong Kong and a 15 point improvement in Korea.

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Distance

From the beginning of government schooling in Australia the issue of distance has been a critical issue in the provision of school education. Alan Barcan (1965, 1980, 1988), a leading education historian of Australian education, has observed that the combination of a very large land mass and a very small population has resulted in a particular challenge for the provision and quality of education in Australia. This was particularly the case prior to arrival of the internet and advanced telecommunications.

The issue in the past was how to ensure that children in remote locations had access to education. This problem, has been addressed by distance education strategies including “school of the Air” and the by flying teachers to remote settlements for intensive instruction. School of the Air involved teachers presenting lessons on the radio and students from around the country listening to their daily lessons. The national radio and television broadcaster, the ABC, has a long history of providing educational programs, many of which are used in regular schools.

The current challenge facing school systems is how to attract teachers to rural and remote areas, and once they do arrive, encouraging them to stay. In NSW, the most populous State, this problem has long been addressed by appointing new teachers to what they call “hard to staff” schools and then giving them extra credit for working in these schools so that they could be promoted quickly on the transfer list with the ultimate goal of getting a teaching position on the coast or in a major city. While this has solved the staffing problem to some extent, the result is that very few teachers remain in these schools and they face a constant turnover of principals and teachers.

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Possibly due to high teacher turnover, and also no doubt to the relatively low socio-economic status of many of these rural and remote students, the learning outcomes of students in Australia are directly correlated to where they live, with Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory performing at least two years behind students in the most urban school jurisdiction, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Ainley and Gebhart (2013) identify this issue of being particularly significant in explaining Australia’s performance on international rankings.

The issue of “distance overlaps” with the challenge of equity. Aboriginal and low SES students are more predominant in rural and remote parts of Australia. The challenge of equity is now considered more fully.

Equity

The challenge of assuring that children receive the best possible education regardless of their gender, socio-economic status, geographic location, cultural background or level of physical, emotion and intellectual ability has been a constant theme of Australian education. At the risk of oversimplifying the history of how the challenge of equity has been addressed in Australia, for the first 100 years of schooling in Australia, differences between children were addressed through provision of different education. This was both a planned public policy goal and an outcome of the bitter conflicts between public and private schooling lobbies.

Public policy ensured that children were streamed into different schools and classes based on their ability. Governments provided schools for academically gifted students, different schools and curriculum for rural and remote students, high schools for boys and other schools for girls and schools for intellectually and physically

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disabled students. Through parent choice, as has been noted earlier, differences between socio-economic and religious groups of Australians, and the inability of public policy in the late 19th century to achieve a settlement to these differences has led to a very high proportion of non-government, mostly religiously affiliated schools in Australia.

By the 1980s there was a wide range of schools across government and non-government schools sectors. While the proliferation of non-government schools remains, during the 1980s and 1990s, public policy began to change. The most significant policy change related to the closure of a large number of special schools and the integration of “special needs” students into mainstream schools and classrooms. While most jurisdictions have reduced the number of academically selective schools, all have increased the variety of schools. It is now quite common to find government schools that specialise in the performing arts, languages, sports science and so forth. The key point here is that the differences among schools is now increasingly based on the child’s interests, rather than gender, disability, cultural background or socio-economic status.

Among identified “equity groups”, the educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students remains the most significant and sustained problem. A very small percentage of indigenous students complete Year 12 and an even lower percentage move on to tertiary education. Indigenous students learning outcomes remain the lowest of any equity group. The following quote from an ACER report by Sue Thomas and her colleagues (2012) provide evidence of the extent of the problem of Indigenous students’ learning outcomes as shown in TIMSS results:

At Year 4 the average score for Indigenous students in reading, mathematics and science was around 60 score points lower

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than that of their non-Indigenous counterparts. In terms of benchmark, which represent what students can and cannot do, it is notable that around half of the Indigenous students tested, in all three domains, did not reach the Intermediate benchmark. (p.159)

The long-standing concern about equity issues has had a significant influence on education research in Australia. An informal analysis of Faculty of Education websites of universities across Australia, as well as observations of the topics of presentations at national research conferences over many years suggests that a large proportion of Australian education researchers have focused on education equity issues and have relied heavily of on sociological theories to examine education issues. This may in part explain why many education initiatives in Australia have had their origins in research and policy developments from the USA and to a lesser extent, from England.

Deference

School education in Australia is largely derived from education policies and practices from the USA and England. To give just some of examples of the many instances of “policy-borrowing” over the past 160 years, during the 19th century it was common for major reviews of education to be conducted by educational experts from England. During the 20th century, the development of high school education, the continuation of the school inspection process and, in the early 1960s, the introduction of the comprehensive high school all had their origins in similar, if not identical, developments in England. This century the trend has continued with the adoption of a standards-based approach to teacher certification and quality, professional development and teaching schools, and the introduction of programs such as “Teach for Australia” and “Teach

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First” all having their origins in North America and England. Moreover, many of the key people who have been leading education agencies here have relied heavily on consultants from both of these countries and on their own frequent trips and even short-term appointments to education positions in those countries.

I attribute this “policy-borrowing” to an attitude of deference to foreign expertise. In Australia, social commentators and historians have observed that as a country we suffer from a “cultural cringe”. This may be difficult to translate into Chinese, so it can be understood as a lack of confidence and a belief that we could not be as good as experts from other western countries. The great irony of this” policy borrowing is that despite more than a decade of evidence that Australian schools perform better than their northern hemisphere counterparts, and that many Asian countries perform better than we do, we continue to look to the England and the USA for new ideas in Education. While this is partly explained by the preference of Australian academics to conduct research that criticizes practice rather than developing better practice, in my view the main reason we show “deference” to other countries is a fundamental lack of confidence on the part of policy makers in the ability of Australian academics and teachers to identify and resolve the problems of teaching practice and education provision.

At another time I would like to develop this analysis further, but for the purpose of this presentation, I would like to now move to the discussion of topics that I think teachers and researchers in both our countries could consider for future collaborations.

Areas for Collaboration Between Australian Teachers and Researchers

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It has only recently occurred to me that Australia and China have both looked to the United States, England and the OECD for our school education goals, strategies and programs. The Education reform agenda that has been in place in China for 30 years has now shifted its focus to issues of equity and quality. It has also embraced major curriculum reform, established tighter controls on teaching, including the introduction in some provinces of performance pay for teachers. Many of the experts I have spoken to in China as well as articles that I have read on education reforms in China agree that there needs to be much better implementation of policy. National policies are developed by the Chinese Government and the provinces and municipalities are expected to implement these initiatives. Teachers in schools have experienced a high level of stress as they attempt to incorporate new curriculums and teaching strategies while believing that they receive little support for these major changes. Teachers and school system administrators in Australia often view reforms in the same way.

I think that teacher collaboration and research by university academics in both countries should focus on the topic of “reform implementation”. Key questions might be:

a) Where did these reform ideas originate?b) What assumptions do these reforms make about the purpose

of schooling, students and teachers?c) What problems were they designed to address?d) To what extent and in what ways is the context of school

education similar in our local context to the context in the country where these ideas were developed?

e) In what ways have these policy initiatives and reforms been modified to suit local contexts?

f) Who decides how policies and reforms agendas are interpreted and implemented in schools?

g) How do we know that these initiatives have been successful?

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h) To what extent have teachers, principals, parents and students been involved in developing local solutions to local problems?

i) How are the reform projects resourced? How are teachers trained to understand the changes and to implement them?

Another area in which our countries, and admittedly a large number of other countries, have a common interest is in the international assessments used in PISA and TIMMS to compare student-learning outcomes across jurisdictions. Teachers and other education experts in both countries agree that the tests that are used as the basis for these international comparisons do not capture the full complexity and breadth of the goals of contemporary schooling. I have been fascinated by the Shanghai Municipal Government’s decision in 20112 to develop the “Green Index” to measure things such as creativity, teamwork, problem solving and happiness! My university and the schools in Canberra would very much like to partner with Chinese schools and universities in the development and trialing of the Green Index. It would be good to have teachers in Canberra and China work with academics in both countries to develop a measure that teachers could be confident would provide a more comprehensive assessment of the roader goals of schooling. You may be interested to know that while Australian performance on PISA and TIMMS is just above the OECD average, in general terms, the performance of students in the ACT is the highest of all Australian jurisdictions and is comparable to that of Shanghai (ACER, 2013., Thomson, Bortoli and Buckley, 2013).

Finally, I think that there would be great value in a comparative study of teacher education in Australia and China. It would be interesting to identify the salient features of our approaches to pre-service teacher education, particularly the nature of professional

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experience placements, how these are supported by the host school, and how much time teacher education students spend in schools during their university study. It would also be fascinating to study teacher professional development in both countries and the link professional development and improved student learning outcomes. A separate study of the value of teacher exchange and study tour programs would be of great interest at my university and among teachers and administrators in ACT schools.

Conclusion

I started this paper by suggesting that there were many similarities between Australian and Chinese school education systems. While I have outlined some of these similarities the differences between our countries and schools are significant. Our different histories, cultures, political systems, natural environments and populations -- Australia is about the same size as one of your large cities while we occupy a land mass that is not much smaller than all of China – are in my view, what makes the potential for the professional and research collaborations that I have presented of such great interest to me and my colleagues. I hope that we can discuss these matters in greater detail during this conference and that we can begin work soon on these projects.

Thank you again to the conference organisers and to all of you for being here for this presentation. It has been a great honour to be invited to your conference and to talk with you today.

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References

ACER (2013). Fact sheet: Selected results from PISA 2012. Australian Council for Education Research.

www.acer.edu.au/.../Fact_Sheet_-_Selected_Results_PISA_2012.pdf

Ainley, John & Gebhardt, Evelyn. (2013). Measure for measure: A review of the outcomes of school education in Australia. Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd. Camberwell, Victoria, Australia.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2013). Schools Australia 2012 (Cat. No. 4421.0) Canberra, Australia.

Australian Government. (2012). Asian Century White Paper. Canberra. Australia.

Australian Government. (2012). Review of Funding for Schooling – Final report (The Gonski Report). Australian Government. Canberra, Australia.

Barcan, A. (1988). Two centuries of education in New South Wales. Kensington, N.S.W.: New South Wales University Press.

Barcan, A. (1980). A history of Australian education. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Barcan, A. (1965). A short history of education in New South Wales. Sydney: Martindale Press.

Jensen, B., Hunter A., Sonnerman, J., and Burns, T. (2012). Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia. The Grattan Institute.

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Shanghai Education Commission (2011). Annual report on Education in Shanghai in 2011. Shanghai Education Commission.

Thomson, S., De Bortoli, L., & Buckley, S. (2013). PISA in brief: Highlights from the full Australian report: PISA 2012: How Australia measures up. Australian Council for Education Research. www.acer.edu.au/documents/PISA-2012-Report.pdf

Thomson, S., Hillman, K., Wernert, N., Schmid, M., Buckley, S., & Munene, A. (2012). Monitoring Australian Year 4 student achievement internationally: TIMSS and PIRLS 2011. Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd. Camberwell, Victoria, Australia.

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