The Australian Education Union changes the subject

Ask them anything you like and they will give you the same talking points

Photo by Aditya Joshi on Unsplash

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Yesterday, a new set of submissions was published for the Senate’s inquiry into the issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms. One of the new submissions is by the Australian Education Union (AEU). It is an extraordinary example of disconnect between a union and the interests of its members.

The AEU don’t want to talk about the issue of classroom disruption:

“The AEU entirely rejects the assumptions made about “disorderly, poorly disciplined classroom environments” and the inappropriate interpretation of the OECD disciplinary climate index in this Inquiry’s terms of reference. We also note that whilst this Inquiry’s terms of reference presume that disruption is rife, there is no attempt made to investigate the factors that drive current conditions in Australia’s schools. This submission will seek to rectify the shortcomings of this Inquiry by addressing the litany of education policy failures over the last decade that have left Australian public schools without the resources they urgently need to meet the needs of students.”

Resources are important and the AEU have a case to make about funding. And yet the idea that the AEU would entirely reject the premise of the inquiry and discuss something else seems at odds with the interests of regular classroom teachers.

As with many of the other submissions, the AEU conflates classroom behaviour issues with disability, when teachers know that unless defined extremely expansively — which, to be fair, it often is — disability is only a part of the mix. The kind of low-level classroom disorder captured by the OECD data — where the teacher has to wait a long time to settle the class, for example — is about everyday teaching. Sometimes, students don’t need a deep and profound reason to disrupt the class. Sometimes, they are just bored or avoiding work or trying to enhance their position with their peer group.

Nevertheless, the AEU stick to their romantic view that if we provide enough funding, a miracle will happen and all behaviour issues will be solved:

“Many students labelled as disruptive are neurodiverse or have disabilities. A well-resourced public education system that values diversity, understands social and cognitive development, engages all learners through inclusive processes and is responsive to fundamental human needs has the potential to develop all students into highly literate, numerate, actively engaged, resilient and connected members of the wider community.”

To be fair, many AEU members will be subject to the growing burden of bureaucracy around disability, where everything must be documented. The AEU’s strongest funding argument is about the amount targeted specifically to meeting individual adjustments and how schools sometimes have to raid other budgets to support these adjustments. However, the authors never question whether these adjustments are evidence-based and an alternative to throwing more resources at documenting everything is to question the value of this expanding body of paperwork.

Throughout their submission, the AEU continues to answer questions nobody asked with varying degrees of salience.

They write at length about the value of public education, equity and gini coefficients. They may have a point. However, we can be pretty certain that nothing is going to change substantially in this area in the short and medium term that will affect the experience of AEU members, even with a Labor government in power in Canberra.

To create a more comprehensive school system would require the kind of compromises outlined in a new report for the Australian Learning Lecture where the state offers to fully fund Catholic, Anglican and other denominational schools in return for them no longer charging fees. Such compromises would be needed to address capacity issues if the government stopped subsidising fee paying schools entirely. This move would effectively make Australia’s system similar to England’s where church schools sit in the state system. However, I detect little appetite to compromise on the secular principle from public school campaigners, so the current situation is likely to persist.

The AEU write at length about the teacher shortage but never make the connection to poor behaviour having a part to play in that shortage. Instead, they focus on workload without making it explicit that behaviour is a driver of workload — although they do obliquely note that behaviour specialists (in New South Wales?) that were once provided by the Department of Education are now a role devolved to schools.

The AEU take the opportunity to criticise the NAPLAN suite of literacy and numeracy assessments. The relationship to classroom disruption is unclear. They call for teacher autonomy over curriculum and practice, referencing that AITSL standards as if they are evidence of anything. The write of NAPLAN and COVID affecting wellbeing. Well, I guess they will if we tell students they do often enough.

Perhaps most eccentrically, the authors argue that teacher training, ‘is failing to prepare graduates for the classroom,’ and therefore we must not move away from the current model of a two-year masters degree. If it’s failing, why not change it? The possibility that graduates will learn more about classroom management in schools than in lectures theatres should at least be explored. Most graduates I meet express frustration at their teacher training, seeing it as a series of boxes to tick and openly talk about writing essays they disagree with in order to please lecturers. This is hardly surprising when trainers lecturing in practical techniques for classroom management may never have been teachers themselves.

The AEU conclude, like some kind of conspiracy theorist, that they consider, “this Inquiry an opportunistic and ideological attack on public schools, students, and teachers.” An inquiry that seeks to address a major cause of teacher stress is an attack on teachers? Hardly.

It’s tempting to ask how unions that are meant to look out for the interests of their members can grow so detached from them.

That’s a bigger question.