Fraser Education Survey
I recently surveyed the Fraser electorate on their experiences with ACT schools and some of their perception regarding our Government’s education reforms.
The results were positive and showed that the Government’s commitment to boosting literacy and numeracy, maintaining a well-rounded curriculum and attracting and retaining quality teachers is shared by parents.
Over 1000 people completed the survey which was distributed between October and December last year. Responses with postcodes from outside the ACT and from the southside were removed leaving 974 responses from Fraser. You may notice that some of the percentages don’t add to 100 per cent – this is due to rounding.
SCHOOL SECTOR
The sample group roughly reflects national numbers in this area. Here is a graph showing the proportion of respondents’ children who attend either government schools, non-government schools or both:
Type of school attended
SCHOOL RESOURCING
Overall, most parents felt their children’s schools were well resourced. However, there were slight discrepancies between parents whose children attended non-government and those who attended government schools. In the free response section, many parents highlighted the funding gaps between public and private schools. Some parents also spoke about the tired facilities at their local schools and these comments were mostly focused on government and Catholic schools. School funding is an important issue which is why I am a supporter of the Gonski recommendations and why the Gillard government will be pursuing reform in this area. The results below are shown as percentages.
School resourcing
EDUCATION POLICY PRIORITIES
I have been really lucky to have met many of the great teachers who work in our north-side schools. The importance of attracting and retaining quality teachers ranked by far the most important issue for parents completing the survey. In the free comments section, many parents spoke about the dedication of their child’s teachers and spoke about the need to improve teacher pays in order to attract and retain more like them. I have written more on this topic which you can read here.
Ranked most important
Demonstrating the importance of quality teachers continued to rank highly showing that over 60% of respondents ranked it as their most or second most important issue. The Gillard Government’s focus on literacy and numeracy and strong curriculums were mirrored in the results of this survey demonstrating that policy is moving in a responsive direction and that parents and Government share the same priorities.
Ranked second most important
MYSCHOOL WEBSITE AND BUILDING THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION
The MySchool Website was designed to empower parents with information about their children’s school and help them in their decisions regarding what kind of education is the best fit for them and the results show that most parents have utilised it. This means that more than half of the respondents have a suite of information at hand when making decisions about which school to send their children to. These results also demonstrate that parents are able to have a more informed discussion regarding school resourcing into the future.
Most people have used the MySchool website
Similarly, a large proportion of the respondents had seen a BER project around the area. This perhaps demonstrates how far reaching the program is and it’s great that many of our local schools have received funding for important improvements to their infrastructure.
Awareness of Building the Education Revolution program
YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL
Perhaps the most heartening section of the survey was this section which tended to produce very positive responses. The responses show that the ACT has great principals and teachers and that the Territory’s schools are well placed to deliver quality education for our kids. But they also show the strong relationships parents have with their child’s school and this again came out in the free responses where many parents spoke about how wonderful their child’s teachers were.
| Please rate how much you agree with the following statements. If you have multiple children as school, please answer for the eldest child.
|
Strongly disagree | Disagree | Neither agree nor disagree | Agree | Strongly agree | |
| My child’s school has a commitment to learning
|
1% | 3% | 9% | 36% | 51% | |
| My child’s school is a safe environment
|
2% | 5% | 13% | 53% | 27% | |
| My child has great teachers
|
2% | 6% | 18% | 46% | 28% | |
| My child’s school has a terrific principal
|
3% | 6% | 24% | 37% | 31% | |
| My child’s school is well-resourced
|
5% | 21% | 21% | 41% | 11% | |
| My child’s school has good buildings
|
5% | 14% | 19% | 44% | 18% | |
| My child’s school has good equipment
|
2% | 17% | 21% | 49% | 11% | |
| My child’s school encourages a love of learning | 2% | 7 % | 16% | 48% | 27% | |
The results were also reported in the Canberra Times, with thoughtful comments from other education stakeholders.
I find the discrepancies on resourcing between parents whose children attended non-government and those who attended government schools interesting. Having visited and worked in many private and public schools over many years I find very little difference in the quality of facilities, particularly in the ACT.
There may be some difference in student/facility ratios, however the major diferences are due to the age of facilities, both private and public sectors generally providing the best available facilities when they were aquired.
I think the survey shows that parents of private school students believe their schools are better resourced (and public school parents believe they are worse resourced) than is actually the case.
How are parents able to answer the questions about the quality of the teachers and the principal. Regardless of any other virtues that a school may have the most important is teacher quality and of somewhat lesser importance is that of the principal. Parents can only ever be outsiders and can only see what the staff presents and their child’s results. Where blame resides for a failing pupil can only ever be the personal reaction of a parent.
This rubbish about “which school is best for your child?” is just neo-liberal ideological argot.
The best performing Western school system is that of Finland. There are no privately funded schools there and schools are funded based on need only. Parents don’t have to worry about ‘choice’ of school because their nearest school is as good as any other – and they are the best in the world!
“Choice” is just another device used by private school lobbies to entrench their privilege. Along with ‘funding maintained” demands and “class war” hysterics.
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[...] recently carried out a survey on education in the Fraser electorate. We got responses from around a thousand electors and a good distribution across school sectors, [...]