Pirate Congress 2015/Motions/Policy and Platform/Education Update

Preamble
Education is a powerful determinant of well-being. It is a source of wealth, a provider of life skills, an enabler of participation, and a core component of civil society. The 2000 Dakar World Education Conference noted that all young people have the right to an education that includes “learning to know, to do, to live together and to be". Science has also long been critical to progress and human development. Pirate Party Australia would seek to immediately re-purpose funding allocated to the Asset Recycling Fund, which provides incentive payments to state governments who sell public assets. This funding would instead be used to revitalise science and education in Australia. At all stages of our education system, Pirate Party Australia will support innovation, proper resourcing, and forms of accountability which link closely to the community and public.

Early childhood education
Early childhood education is crucial to a child's development in later life. We will seek to provide a means for parents to play a greater role in childcare by trialling a system of childcare cooperatives based on successful overseas models. A co-op system will provide a means for willing parents to combine resources and provide low-cost or free childcare by taking turns as carers and volunteers. This will provide social opportunities to new families and also reduce pressure on the existing childcare system.

School education
The principle of free, secular and compulsory schooling held sway for decades in Australia. However, recent changes have shifted the funding balance away from public schools, and towards private and religious schools. Justified in the name of choice, this change has actually reduced choices for many by leaving entire postcodes lacking any comprehensive public schooling. The growth of taxpayer funded private schools risks creating a two-tiered system in which students from families unable to pay private school fees are concentrated in the increasingly under-funded public system. This approach to education has resulted in Australia’s low and falling ranking in global measures of performance among disadvantaged students.

Private schooling also divides students along religious lines and has led to cases where taxpayer-funded schools are actively refusing to meet educational standards in areas such as science education. Religious indoctrination (whether through organised schooling or chaplaincy programs) is a fundamentally inappropriate use of taxpayer funds in a secular country.

Pirate Party Australia believes that the flow of taxpayer funding towards religious and private schools should be checked in order to reduce the trend towards segregation along religious and economic lines. A return of private school funding to the 1996 level will free sufficient funds to fully implement Gonski recommendations in the public system. At the same time, public schools should be made accountable to their communities. We would seek to reduce centralised micro-management and vest control over administration, hiring and funding to principals and school boards, with boards made open to parents. We will also seek to trial a funding mechanism to allow schools to 'bulk-bill' costs of after-school instruction so that qualified experts can be engaged to teach in areas of interest chosen by students and parents. This will allow public schools to offer niche and special-interest education, and provide more tools to overcome disadvantage.

To improve teaching standards, Pirate Party Australia advocates extensions in supported classroom time for trainee teachers in conjunction with a rise in top-end salaries for teachers with significant experience. Pirate Party Australia would seek to increase the focus on teaching life skills and entrepreneurialism to students prior to Year 10. We will also seek to reduce some of the institutional pressure placed on students to remain at school after Year 10, since forcing unwilling students to stay ultimately leads to the disruption of more engaged students. Students wishing to study at TAFE after Year 10 should be free to do so, with student funding following them.

Tertiary education
Tertiary education is increasingly important as we shift towards a more knowledge-based economy. While student numbers continue to rise, growing evidence exists of a troubling deterioration in standards and academic morale in universities. This manifests in various ways: approximately half of academics have been assessed to be at risk of psychological illness due to insecurity and overwork, while two thirds believe academic freedom is being curtailed. Higher education has suffered from efforts by successive governments to force it into a top-down, corporatist structure. This is an inappropriate form for an education system and one which has led to increasing stultification and surveillance, with demands for corporate style messaging eating away academic freedom of speech. The drive towards pseudo-measurement of educational outcomes has imposed unprecedented administrative costs, with administrators and managers now outnumbering academics (who nonetheless face increasing demands to conduct administration).

The impacts of corporatised education are uniformly contrary to what is intended. The narrow emphasis on vocational education is creating graduates unfit for many jobs - employers have raised issues with serious deficits in team work, creative thought and communication. Administrative burdens imposed in the name of quality assurance are driving down quality by drawing resources out of teaching and research. Attempts to quantify educational outputs obscure more than they reveal. And the lowering of standards to accommodate overseas students is reducing Australia’s attractiveness as an international student destination.

Genuine transparency means accountability to the general public, not to a corporate structure. We believe that publicly funded academic research should be made freely available to the public and no longer locked up behind publisher paywalls. We also believe in enhancing the quality of academic work by following the advice of academics themselves, who urgently seek higher per-student funding and greater autonomy. We would seek to expand digital education as an important resource for the poor, for people in remote locations, and carers and people with disabilities. Education should be viewed as a pillar of civil society rather than a money making commodity, and we believe campuses should be encouraged to play a greater role in the community. Passion, curiosity and freedom to speak and question are key curbs to unhindered power, and a successful university system should embody those traits.

Science and research
The knowledge and advancement gained through science is fundamental to human well-being and the emergence of modern society. Most economic growth in modern societies is the product of advances in science and technology, and OECD research suggests public investment in science pays off many times over. Business and the science community alike are calling for Australia to adopt a national Science Plan. Australia is the only OECD nation to lack one, and researchers in this country face a crippling combination of under-funding, poor collaboration among research bodies, and erratic grant periods. This is unsustainable, and a proper Science Plan is urgently needed to improve co-ordination and lay out a foundation for long-term and collaborative research. It will also provide a pathway for improved resourcing of scientific research and a broadening of our research profile into areas such as space research which offer potentially enormous benefits.

Efforts to improve co-ordination need to be accompanied with efforts to support collaboration. Australia has the poorest collaboration between science and business in the OECD. Pirate Party Australia would seek to address through this an innovation voucher scheme. Vouchers would be funded through a program and released to small businesses in order to allow them to purchase services from education and research bodies. This will provide another funding source for research while also encouraging relationship building between sectors. State research could also be made more dynamic by allowing researchers at government bodies to personally own patents on their research. In places such as Germany, this has enabled entrepreneurial researchers to spin out and start new businesses, adding vibrancy to the private sector and breaking down barriers between private and public spheres.

Improve provision of community based childcare

 * Provide certification processes and a one-stop information service for the setup of childcare cooperatives.

Foster well-funded, dynamic and secular public schools

 * Reallocate federal education funding:
 * Progressively reduce quantum of funding to private schools to match 1996 levels, with allowance for private schools to transfer or sell land and assets into the public system.
 * Abolish the school chaplains program.
 * Direct funding towards full implementation of Gonski reforms as part of a needs-based funding system.
 * Change school accountability frameworks:
 * Abolish existing paperwork accountability systems and provide schools with control over finances including management of bank accounts and purchases.
 * Support the establishment of principal networks to encourage the spread of effective systems.
 * Allow students 16 and over to transfer to TAFE and provide vouchers to offset fees.
 * Trial a bulk billing scheme for extracurricular activities including tutoring from outside experts in areas determined by students and parents.
 * Provide stronger support and incentives to teachers:
 * Ensure trainee teachers receive a minimum of 12 weeks supported classroom time.
 * Allow ongoing salary progression for teachers with more than 10 years of experience.
 * Include a solid foundation of life skills and personal development within the National Curriculum:
 * Grades 1-4 to cover behaviour towards others, people skills, and exploration of science and critical thinking;
 * Grades 5-6 to develop earlier material and additionally cover sex education, conflict resolution, and ethics;
 * Grades 7-8 to develop earlier material and additionally cover accidents and emergency response, civics and voting, budgeting, basic IT skills, careers and starting a business.
 * Abolish Special Religious Instruction in public schools and limit religious study to comparative religion in the context of history, culture and literature.
 * Enact a pilot program to distribute open source, low cost, 3D printers to interested high schools.

Support academic autonomy in tertiary institutions

 * Impose benchmarks to guarantee the use of public funds for academic salaries, teaching material and research.
 * Expand full-time academic positions targeting a maximum student-teacher ratio of 20:1.
 * Guarantee study leave, research time, and fieldwork in academic contracts.
 * Restore academic control over course and research funding, course design & outcomes, unit guides, marking, workload allocation, hiring, and teaching choices.
 * Defund administrative functions and organisations associated with monitoring, surveillance, government reviews and data collection.
 * Abolish standardising and rigid templates.
 * Abolish code of conduct restrictions on academic speech.
 * Limit the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to an advisory role.

Increase educational resourcing and outputs

 * Reallocate $350 million per year from the Asset Recycling fund to support a 20 per cent increase in base per-student funding.
 * Ensure a portion of this funding is directed to restoring access and equity measures for poorer students, as well as provision of counselling and childcare services.
 * Replace the lifetime FEE-HELP limit with a maximum loan cap, offset by repayments.
 * Institute Open Access provisions for publicly funded academic, peer-reviewed, journal articles produced within universities.
 * Make all articles freely available to the public without paywalls or publisher restrictions.
 * Promote increased use of campuses for community seminars, live events and public debates.
 * Increase provision of free online courses, and encourage greater use of online infrastructure to reduce course costs and improve budget sustainability.
 * Encourage greater course-driven interaction between students and businesses or community groups.
 * Apply full whistle-blower protections to users of Unileaks and similar outlets.

Develop an Australian Science Plan

 * Improve co-ordination among science bodies.
 * Establish an Innovation Board comprising researchers, government and industry representatives to draw together existing programs, develop research and innovation priorities and monitor STEM progress.
 * Improve public understanding of science.
 * Provide an online portal for use by schools and the general public, with permanent streaming and free download of publicly owned science and science education programs.
 * Require every primary school to employ at least one teacher with specialised STEM skills.
 * Improve conditions for researchers.
 * Align grant processes to reduce administrative costs and link grant periods to requirements of the research.
 * Recommence the International Science Linkages program.
 * Provide an online portal to facilitate researcher access to alternative funding sources, including crowdfunding.
 * Allow researchers working within government bodies to own patents on their research.
 * Re-purpose funding allocated to the Asset Recycling Fund to directly support scientific research.
 * Provide $500 million in additional annual funding to Australian research bodies in line with priorities identified in the Science Plan.
 * Provide $50 million in additional annual funding to the CSIRO to support fundamental research.
 * Engage Australian Academy of Science to develop a long-term plan for funding and operation of Australian research infrastructure facilities.
 * Provide $100 million for one-off development of space infrastructure recommended in the NCSS Decadal Plan.
 * Establish a National Institute for Space Science to co-ordinate infrastructure and projects and seek global capital.
 * Provide $50 million to fund a distribution of 'innovation vouchers' to interested small businesses.
 * Vouchers will enable businesses to acquire up to $50,000 worth of research and related services from certified research bodies.
 * Undertake additional investments in pharmaceutical development (see patents policy), renewable energy technology (see environment and climate change policy) and mental health research (see drugs policy).