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Media Release

October 13 2006

UniSA wins funding to examine Australian schooling standards

In a climate where education is seen as a commodity that is bought and sold in an education market, increasingly people talk about the private benefits of education. But what are the public benefits and purposes of education?

The University of South Australia has won an Australian Research Council Linkage Project grant with industry to examine education investment in Australian schooling to determine what and how public purposes are being served.

The public purposes of schooling are central to the social and economical health of Australian society, according to chief investigator and UniSA’s Professor of Education, Alan Reid. He will be conducting research into new ways of thinking about the public/private debate with three other education academics (associate Professor Neil Cranston, University of Queensland; Professor Jack Keating, University of Melbourne; and Professor Bill Mulford, University of Tasmania) and industry partners, the Australian Government Primary Principals Association and the Education Foundation.

In earlier research, Professor Reid proposed a different way of thinking about the funding of schools by the Australian government, one that foregrounds the public purposes of education.

“In the current policy climate we are told that there is an education market, with consumers who exercise choice. But large sums of public money go into education. The community has a right to expect that this money will also contribute to broad public goals. So how can individual choice and the public good be balanced?” he asks.

Prof Reid’s research attracted the attention of the Australian Government Primary Principals Association (AGPPA), particularly because it suggested a means by which to advance the deadlocked public/private debate. As a result, AGPPA approached the research team to explore the idea further. The successful Linkage grant application emerged.

“Our research will seek to find out what educators and school communities think are the public purposes of education and what things our society holds as so central that they must be pursued by all schools in receipt of public funds.

“That is, the project will use the insights and current practices of many school communities to establish how the purposes of schooling are currently understood and enacted.

“Clarification of these purposes of schooling will provide the basis for us to reassess and refine such policy statements as the National Goals of Schooling, look at professional development activities, resources and sharing of good practice, and develop methods for assessing the achievement of public purposes,” Prof Reid said.

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