The Stick Without the Carrot Produces a Simple Non-Solution. (December 25, 2012)

Brian Caldwell, a former dean of education at the universities of Melbourne and Tasmania told The Australian's Stephen Matchett: "[T]eacher education faculties are the life-blood of rural universities and high standards might lead (to) their having small enrolments or no enrolments at all". Nevertheless those relying on training teachers for income should "put the national interest first" and eliminate enrolling students deemed to be substandard.

He continued: "Universities have complained for years about not getting teaching students with maths, science and language skills, but there is no point in hand-wringing unless we are prepared to set the highest standards in teacher education," and indicated that teachers willing to work for internationally uncompetitive salaries makes it all but impossible to lift school performance." In addition: "There is a reluctance in education faculties to admit other countries are doing better."

He also questioned university course accreditation by the commonwealth and the states. "If all they do is rubber-stamp existing programs, a target of being in the top five countries is a waste of time."

Mr Matchett's article was prompted by "Australia's disastrous scores on international measures of primary school literacy and numeracy, released this month. Australian pupils ranked lowest among English-speaking nations for reading and lagged in maths and science".

Lawrence Ingvarson, principal research fellow at the Australian Council for Education Research concurred saying: "The recent results on primary performance were a big wake-up call. We have to attract and train better people." He claimed that minimum school-leaver standards for entry into teaching degrees were being undermined by universities accepting poor-performing students under alternative entry programs, but he gave no indication how he would improve enticements in order to attract better teacher trainees.

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Back in 2004 as The Australian's Brendan Nicholson reports then education minister Brendan Nelson received concerns which prompted a national inquiry into the poor teaching of reading. The independent study confirmed those concerns.

Shortly thereafter Dr Nelson was move to Defence and Julie Bishop took over education. In an interview with Mr Nicholson Ms Bishop damned the Labor government and the education unions she:

said much of what the Coalition tried to do, including its program of $700 vouchers to cover the cost of extra tuition for struggling students, was dismantled by the Labor government.
 

"They were fantastic," Ms Bishop said.
 

"Kids could have private tuition after hours to raise standards. But the unions hated them because it involved the private sector."
 

Ms Bishop said the education unions were strongly opposed to many of the changes.
 

"The education unions refuse to take responsibility for the role they played in undermining the efforts of the Howard government to promote higher standards of teaching in schools.
 

"Everything we tried to do they would take as a direct attack on teachers whereas what we were trying to do was improve the standard of teaching."
 

Ms Bishop said state Labor governments' education ministers were in thrall to the education unions.
 

She said she'd planned to introduce more measures in 2007.
 

"But of course we lost government."

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However, the fact is that neither the Howard Coalition nor the Rudd and Gillard led governments as well as the state governments have made a concerted effort to significantly improve teachers incomes, teaching infrastructure and continued training which takes both resources and time. That's a tough ask. So instead we are left with, the blame game, hand wringing, and waving the cudgel.