The Education Revolution Then and Now. (January 4, 2008)

The January 2, 2008 editorial in The Age refers to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's "Education Revolution" and points out that at the official launch of the Labor Party's election campaign Mr Rudd said: "The cornerstone of my vision for Australia's future is an education revolution... I spoke about Australia's need for an education revolution in my very first speech to Parliament nearly 10 years ago. I have been speaking about it all year. Because I believe passionately in the power of education. I believe education is the engine room of equity. The engine room of opportunity."

In Mr Rudd's maiden speech to the Federal Parliament on November 11, 1998 the education revolution was a key issue for the newly anointed member for Griffith. After alluding to "what new regulatory [economic] structure should be put in place, as the market has apparently failed adequately to apply its own disciplines," he turned to:

A second fundamental challenge facing government...  our nation's education system. Education is both a tool of social justice as well as a fundamental driver of economic development. I believe that the nation needs a revolution in its education system. We have state curricula of highly variable quality and a decline of critical subject areas such as science. We have a demoralised teaching profession whose energies are now dissipated in school administration rather than in syllabus delivery. We have state government, not to mention non-government systems, collapsing under the sheer weight of the funding requirement for the comprehensive introduction of information technology into the curriculum, syllabus and daily classroom teaching. As a nation, these problems need to be tackled head on. Because of the funding imperative, they must be tackled jointly by the Commonwealth and the states.

I believe we need to do something radical about teachers' salaries and the overall status of the teaching profession. I believe we need to do something equally radical about quality assurance of school curricula. I also believe that, if we are serious in our national rhetoric about having the next generation of Australians selling their skills across the world through every medium of electronic commerce, then we must, through the school system, equip them to do that. I understand that my remarks will be met by the inevitable chorus of, `We cannot afford it,' but I ask the question: `As a nation, can we afford not to?' I believe that equity and economic development demand it. In a global economy, a first-class education is one of the few forms of real security that the state can provide to its citizens.

So here we are 9yrs 2mos later and the tyro politician from Griffith is now Prime Minister. Here is his opportunity to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.

To Kevin Rudd just what is, in detail, An Education Revolution?