Release: Quality of education tanking despite increased spending

Release: Quality of education tanking despite increased spending

"A PISA report released this week showed that Australian students are performing worse today than students ten years ago. Considering our federal education budget has grown by over $8.5 billion in the last 5 years, these results point to a larger issue within Australian education,” said ATA Communications Manager, Emilio Garcia.

The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, the nation’s largest grassroots advocacy group representing taxpayers, today expressed concern about poor educational outcomes among young Australians considering how much the government spends on education.

"Government has a nasty habit of throwing money at a problem and expecting it improve, a pattern easily observable in their approach to education. There's a word for doing something several times and expecting a different result.

"It's time that the Australian government recognizes that a lack of funding has not caused the drop in test scores. Rather, a lack of choice and healthy competition between schools has allowed educators and administrators to become lackadaisical. Countries which have adopted school choice or school voucher systems have seen significant improvements to their quality of education.

”Many countries which spend less than us and get better results. According to a recent OCED report, we are ranked number 9 in the world for education spending as a percentage of total government spending, but we are no where near number 9 in student results.

“Every year we add $1.7billion to the education budget and every year test scores get worse. Rewarding failing schools with more taxpayer dollars has hurt not helped Australia’s education system.

"Under an arrangement where government funding followed students, free to switch schools as they chose, failing schools wouldn’t attract students so won’t be given taxpayers money to waste.”