The social engineers on the left have barely been able to contain their excitement at the limitless opportunities offered them by the Wuhan plague. Absolute state control over which businesses are and are not allowed to run. Dictatorial control over whether citizens are even allowed out of their homes. Daily propaganda broadcasts to captive audiences.
The only dim spot for lefty control-freaks is that, for once, children have been turned loose from the watchful gaze of their [state-funded left-wing activists] teachers. Who knows, if this goes on, more parents may actually start to home-school their children, and then where would the climate-bothering, gender-whispering left be?
Never fear, education bureaucrats are working on how to leverage the pandemic, too.
Australia has been ranked among the best places in the world to be during the coronavirus pandemic and the best country to move to after this pandemic is over, according to international media.
Take that, “COVID Queen” Jacinda Ardern!
These accomplishments are not by chance.
In fact, mostly they are a geographically isolated, ocean-bounded, small-population country with only a handful of major cities with mass-transit systems. Australia was never going to be at the level of risk of, say, the US or Europe. If anything, Australia’s COVID outcomes are in spite of, not because of, government policy.
If nothing else, though, those policies have delivered unprecedented power to unelected health bureaucrats. Their counterparts in education are obviously jealous.
But, as we have seen, the advice of health bureaucrats has often been appallingly bad, whether it be the over-reliance on garbage computer models or apparently believing that a virus is able to distinguish between a footy match and a Black Lives Matter protest (thousands of “health professionals” openly encouraged the latter).
The advice of education bureaucrats has likewise been disastrously wrong for decades. As even they can’t help admitting.
Two decades ago, Australia was one of the leading education nations in the world. The OECD, for example, used to hold Australia as one of the best in class in education. But not any longer.
Despite frequent school reforms, educational performance has not been improving. Indeed, it has been in decline compared to many other countries. International data makes that clear. Australian Council for Educational Research concluded it by saying that student performance in Australia has been in long-term decline.
Bear in mind that this piece is written by an education policy expert at the Gonski Institute – the very same Gonski whose “reforms” were enacted a decade ago. Yet, despite the billions more spent in the name of Gonski, Australia’s education standards continued to decline. New Zealand hasn’t done much better: while Kiwi test scores remain marginally higher than Australia’s, the decline in standards has followed an almost identical path. Look across the Tasman, O ye Kiwis, and despair.
Taking the advice of these people is as foolish as taking the pandemic advice of an “expert epidemiologist” whose modelling has been repeatedly, disastrously wrong…oh, wait…
If there’s one thing these “experts” hate, it’s when pesky evidence interferes with their beautiful theories. Solution? Easy! Stop collecting evidence.
Evidence-based education policies use research to link selected treatment and expected outcomes, but they almost always ignore possible harmful side effects they may have on schools, teachers or children[…]If we have learnt anything in 2020, it is that we need to learn to act in education more like we act in medicine.
The Age
I guess you could call exposing the steady decline in standards as a “harmful side effect”. So, just do as a bad doctor does, when her medical prescriptions go bung: bury your mistakes.
In the case of education policy, bureaucrats want to bury their mistakes under billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money.
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