Education at a Glance 2010 - OECD Indicators. (September 8, 2010)

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) yesterday released Education at a Glance 2010 - OECD Indicators (Pages: 472) which reports using data obtained for the most part up to 2008..

According to the announcement of publication: The indicators show who participates in education, how much is spent on it and how education systems operate. They also illustrate a wide range of educational outcomes, comparing, for example, student performance in key subject areas and the impact of education on earnings and on adults’ chances of employment.

New material in [the 2010] edition includes:

• indicators on school choice and the parent voice in education;

• an indicator on the long-term economic impact of improved learning outcomes;

• an indicator benchmarking labour costs by educational levels across OECD countries;

• a review of trends in educational attainment;

• an update on the human and financial resources invested in education;

• an indicator comparing salaries of teachers to earnings of workers with tertiary education;

• a review of adult participation in education and training.

The Age's Jewel Topsfield has extracted figures that demonstrate Australia's over reliance on non-public funding in comparison to other OECD members noting in addition that Australia has the highest proportion of international students enrolled in its tertiary institutions.

• Australia - 20%

• Austria   - 15.5%

• Belgium  - 8.6%

• Canada  - 6.5%
  _________________

• OECD mean - 6.7%

The analysis reports that 44.3% of funding for Australia's tertiary institutions was derived from public sources. The OECD publicly funded mean was 69.1% while Denmark and Norway provided public funding of 96.5% and 97% respectively.

Overall fees derived from international sources contribute some $18 billion annually to the Australian economy making our tertiary sector highly dependent on it, and Ms Topsfield reports: "Ben Jensen, a former OECD analyst... said most other countries had been investing heavily in tertiary education while in Australia investment dropped from 1.6 per cent of gross domestic product in 1995 to 1.5 per cent in 2007."

There is a real and increasing danger of the tail wagging the dog as regards the intellectual structure of the nation's tertiary institutions, much to the detriment of the common good --  for example, in the area of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) instruction in primary and secondary schools.

And the continued overall lack of adequate public support for learning and research at the tertiary level is leading to increasing degradation right through the whole of Australian education. To what extent Australia's 43^rd parliament will rectify the decay remains to be seen.