Letter of Transmission

1. The Secretary's review 1999-2000

2. The Department

3. A summary of the Department's roles and the new reporting framework

4. Analysis of performance for Outcome 1

5. Analysis of performance for Outcome 2

6. Analysis of performance for Outcome 3

7. People management

8. Management and accountability

9. External scrutiny and legal matters affecting the Department

A1. Staffing statistics

A2. Occupational health and safety

A3. Freedom of information

A4. Payments to advertising and market research organisations

A5. Consultancies

A6. Performance against actual results against outcomes and outputs

A7. Financial statements

A8. The Higher Education Contribution Scheme

A9. Discretionary grants

A10. Glossary and acronyms

Contents | Previous | Next 

Section 1. Description  
Section 2. Our strategic priorities
Section 3. Effectiveness indicators 
Section 4. Summary of the achievements against this outcome 

Outcome 1 - School systems provide their students with high quality foundation skills and learning outcomes

Section 1

Description

Commonwealth investment in school education supports fundamental principles that the Government wishes to see embodied in Australian schooling. These include that all students gain essential basic skills and the right of all students to study in a safe environment supported by well-trained and committed teachers.

The Commonwealth provides supplementary assistance for recurrent costs of schools and support for improvement of capital infrastructure, particularly for schools catering to the most educationally disadvantaged students. The Commonwealth also provides funding for a range of targeted programmes to improve learning outcomes for educationally disadvantaged students and improve outcomes in specific Commonwealth targeted teaching and learning areas. Educationally disadvantaged students include those who have not achieved a minimum acceptable standard of literacy or numeracy, students with disabilities, students in rural and remote areas, students from non-English speaking backgrounds, students with a low socioeconomic background and those who are not likely to benefit from mainstream pathways from school to training, further education or employment. Additional funding is provided to redress the significant gaps between the educational outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

The total resources invested in Outcome 1 are set out in Table 2.

Table 2. Resources invested in Outcome 1

click here to see the table (Opens in a new window, close the window to return.)

Contribution of Outputs to Outcome 1

This Outcome relates primarily to the schooling system and has three Output Groups:

• Infrastructure funding for the schools system;
• Assistance for school students with special needs; and
• Enhance the quality of teaching and learning.

Each Output Group is a significant priority. Administered Items under this Outcome (that is, money passed on to other organisations) provide funding to the schools sector and income support to some groups in the community. Departmental Outputs include policy and strategic advice to Government.

Infrastructure funding supports the Schools system. The Commonwealth provides 44 per cent of total public funding for the government schools sector and around 76 per cent of total public funding to the non-government schools sector. The Commonwealth’s contribution gives it the leverage to influence national policies on schooling.

Assistance for school students with special needs supports access to education by all Australians. It targets educationally disadvantaged students. The areas of focus are Indigenous education, students with special learning needs and a range of literacy and numeracy initiatives. The aim is to improve educational outcomes for these groups.

The Output Group that focuses on enhancing the quality of teaching and learning directly supports Outcome 1 by concentrating on the quality and relevance of foundation skills acquired within the schools system. Government and community school education priorities can change over time and this can change the focus of activities undertaken under this Output Group. The current priorities are teacher quality, drug education, vocational and enterprise education in schools, languages and civics and citizenship.

Details of actual performance against the performance indicators provided for each output group in the Education, Training and Youth Affairs Portfolio Budget Statements 1999-2000 can be found at Appendix 6.

There were a number of measures in the 1999-2000 Budget affecting Outcome 1. These are detailed in the Education, Training and Youth Affairs Portfolio Budget Statements 1999-2000.

Section 2 - Our strategic priorities

The Commonwealth Government, through the Department, works cooperatively with the States and Territories to secure better educational outcomes in schools.

A number of strategic priorities were identified in the Education, Training and Youth Affairs Portfolio Budget Statements 1999-2000. These priorities focussed on the finalisation of National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century and the development of appropriate performance information including national literacy and numeracy benchmarks. Other priorities included implementing the new funding model for the non-government school sector and improved access to vocational education and training in schools.

Priority One - A review of the Common and Agreed National Goals for Schooling in Australia, including the development of appropriate performance indicators and/or targets.

The revised National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century released in April 1999 provided a unique opportunity to improve the outcomes of Australian schooling within a framework of national collaboration. The National Education Performance Monitoring Taskforce has been established to develop performance measures so that progress in meeting the goals can be monitored and reported. The Taskforce is concentrating on areas identified by all Ministers of Education. They are literacy, numeracy, participation, completion and destination, vocational education and training in schools, science, information and communication technology, civics and citizenship and enterprise education.

In March 2000, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs approved performance measures for student participation and middle secondary science achievement. Student participation is expected to be reported on in the 2000 National Report for Schooling in Australia, while it is also possible that data on middle secondary science achievement could be available for inclusion. The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs also endorsed two national definitions of student groups, as the Taskforce agreed at an early stage that performance measures need to be reported, not only for total students, but also for key equity groups. The current focus is on science at the primary level, information and communication technology and definitions of language background other than English, geographic location and socioeconomic status. Proposed measures for access, participation and attainment for vocational education and training in schools are being revised for submission to Ministers. Work is also commencing on civics and citizenship education, the national definition of students with disabilities and approaches to effective target setting.

Priority Two - Further development of national literacy and numeracy benchmarks

The National Literacy and Numeracy Plan.

In 1997 Ministers agreed to a National Literacy and Numeracy Plan to support the achievement of literacy and numeracy goals by students. The Plan included:

• assessment of all students by their teachers as early as possible in the first year of schooling;
• early intervention strategies for those students identified as having difficulty;
• professional development for teachers to support the key elements of the Plan; and
• the development of agreed benchmarks for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, against which all children’s achievements in those years can be measured.

Using rigorous, state-based assessment procedures, all Year 3 students have been assessed against the benchmarks from 1998. All Year 5 students will be assessed as soon as possible. There has been good progress towards reporting of student achievements against the benchmarks, with reporting commencing in 1999 within the framework of the annual National Report on Schooling in Australia.

Ministers also agreed that: every child commencing school from 1998 will achieve a minimum acceptable literacy and numeracy standard within four years.

In the context of the National Plan, all Ministers agreed in April 1998 that States and Territories will publicly report nationally comparable aggregated student achievement data against the literacy and numeracy benchmark standards. Benchmarks represent a minimum acceptable standard needed to progress through school. Ministers have also agreed that assessment of student achievement against the benchmarks is through rigorous state-based assessment procedures. The process to equate the results to permit nationally comparable reporting was agreed by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA).

MCEETYA approved national benchmarks for:

• Years 3 and 5 literacy achievement (reading, writing and spelling) in April 1998; and
• Years 3, 5 and 7 numeracy, and Year 7 literacy in March 2000.

The development of benchmarks for Years 9 and 10 is postponed pending data from international assessments.

The Council has also agreed to report:

• the 1999 Years 3 and 5 literacy achievement in 2000;
• the 2000 Years 3 and 5 literacy and numeracy achievement in 2001; and
• the 2001 Years 3, 5 and 7 literacy and numeracy achievement in 2002.

Reporting student performance against agreed national benchmarks is an important step forward in accountability to the Australian community and supports the achievement of national literacy and numeracy goals.

The MCEETYA Benchmarking Taskforce oversees the process to permit nationally comparable reporting.

Under the auspices of the Benchmarking Taskforce, the Benchmark Equating Steering Committee has developed a collaborative process whereby State and Territory assessment items are mapped in a way which enables State and Territory tests to be equated. This process is at the forefront of international psychometric developments in this area.

The first results against the national literacy benchmark were published in the first half of 2000 in a supplement to the 1999 MCEETYA National Report on Schooling in Australia. The results indicate that some 87 per cent of Australian Year 3 students achieved the agreed minimum national standard in reading. These results and further information are available at http://www.curriculum.edu.au/mceetya.

In order to receive funding under the Commonwealth’s Literacy and Numeracy Programme for 2000, education authorities have agreed to undertake full cohort or sample based standardised assessment of Year 3 and Year 5 students against the literacy and numeracy benchmarks. The 2000 literacy and numeracy plans submitted to the Commonwealth by State and Territory education authorities indicate their progress towards full cohort assessment in 2001.

The National Indigenous English Literacy and Numeracy Strategy.

The Prime Minister launched this Strategy in March 2000. It builds on the National Literacy and Numeracy Plan endorsed by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Education Ministers in 1997 and is intended to improve education outcomes for Indigenous people.

The Strategy aims to address six key elements:

• lift school attendance rates;
• address hearing and other barriers to learning;
• provide preschool opportunities;
• train and retain good teachers in areas with significant Indigenous student populations;
• ensure teachers use the most effective, culturally appropriate teaching methods; and
• increase the accountabilities and performance measurement for schools and teachers.

It is intended to mobilise parents and communities through national and local Indigenous leadership and partnerships to help carry out these parts of the Strategy. Cooperative plans will also be developed between Commonwealth, State, Territory and local governments and communities. The first progress reports are due in mid 2001. The results of the 1999 national literacy benchmark exercise show that across Australia, 66.1 per cent of Indigenous students attained the national benchmark in reading. This was some 20 percentage points below the figure for all Australians.

Priority Three - Development of an implementation strategy for a new funding model for the non-government school sector

On 29 June 2000, the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 2000 was introduced into Parliament. The Bill included provision for a new approach to non-government schools funding based on socioeconomic status. Under the new arrangements, general recurrent funding will be distributed according to a fairer and more transparent approach based on need. This will provide higher levels of funding to schools serving the neediest communities.

Priority Four - Improved access to vocational education and training in schools

During the year there was significant growth in participation in the vocational education and training in schools programmes and school-based New Apprenticeships. In 1999 the number of students undertaking vocational education and training in schools was 136 710. There were 117 000 in 1998. The number undertaking school-based New Apprenticeships increased from 1 591 in 1998 to 3 994 in 1999. In addition, 90 per cent of schools with senior secondary school programmes were offering vocational education and training in schools programmes in 1999. This compares with 84 per cent in 1998. These programmes for senior secondary students now cover virtually all industry areas and include programmes from Australian Qualifications Framework Levels I to III.

Return to the top of the page

Section 3 - Effectiveness indicators

This section looks at the four agreed effectiveness indicators stated in the Education, Training and Youth Affairs Portfolio Budget Statements 1999-2000. In future years this section will be expanded to include indicators on the literacy and numeracy achievements of Year 3, Year 5 and Year 7 students. These indicators will include time series that will allow comparisons of performance over time. In addition, as the work of the National Education Performance Monitoring Taskforce comes to fruition, there will be indicators of participation, vocational education and training in schools and achievements in areas such as science and information and communication technology.

Access to Schooling

In 1999, there were 3 271 229 funded enrolments in Australian schools which was 99.8 per cent of the 1999 estimate. This is projected to increase to about 3 293 000 funded enrolments in 2000.

Student retention and completion rates

The available data on the extent to which young people stay on to Year 12 are summarised in Table 3. It shows that, in broad terms, the proportion of students continuing to Year 12 rose between 1989 and 1993, but has remained stable over the last five years. As in previous years, the retention rate remained higher for females than males. In 1999 the difference was twelve percentage points.

Data in the table also show that retention to Year 12 remains lower than average for Indigenous students, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and rural and remote students. However, retention rates for Indigenous students increased by six percentage points for Years 10 and 12 and by nine percentage points for Year 11 over the 1996-1999 period. In addition, the gap between students from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds has narrowed to 14 percentage points from 19 in 1989. Remote students showed a greater increase in retention than either urban or rural students over the decade. They rose from 47 per cent in 1989 to 56 per cent in 1999.

Table 3: Student retention and completion rates: 1989 to 1999 (selected years)

Destination of school leavers

Table 4 highlights changes in the destinations of 15 to 19 year old school leavers in the last decade. Most noticeable is the significant decline in the proportion of young school leavers in full employment between 1989 and later years. This is indicative of the effects of the 1990-1991 recession and the related weakness in the youth labour market. On the other hand, the proportion of young people in higher education has increased. The data show ten percentage points increase between 1989 and 1998. At the same time, the proportion of 15 to 19 year old school leavers in TAFE has remained stable.

Table 4: Destination of 15-19 year old school leavers(1) by labour force status and type of tertiary institution attended, Australia, selected years (per cent).

1. Includes persons who left school after years 10, 11 or 12.
2. Destination is either labour force status or tertiary institution in the year after leaving school.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey (unpublished data).

Educational attainment levels of the adult population

Overall, the level of educational attainment of the Australian population is rising. However, as expected, such changes occur fairly slowly. Of particular interest is that the percentage of the population not completing the highest level of schooling in 1998 has dropped by four percentage points since 1993, the first year the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported educational attainment in this format. It is also worth noting that the percentage of the population with a postgraduate diploma or bachelor degree has risen by five percentage points since 1983.

Table 5. Educational attainment of the adult population aged 15-64 years, Australia, 1993 to 1999 (selected years) (per cent).

Please note: it is not possible to provide data earlier than 1993 as the classifications were changed in that year.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics Transition from Education to Work 1999, Cat 6227.0 and earlier related publications.

Return to the top of the page

Section 4 - Summary of the achievements against this Outcome

The data indicate steady improvement in school participation and some improvement in the education attainment of Australia’s adult population. It is expected that this will be reflected, as it continues over time, in terms of the qualifications profile of the total adult population (as shown above). Chapter 3 noted that the proportion of 19 to 22 year olds either completing school or with post-school qualifications has been rising steadily.

In terms of equity, it is pleasing to note the improvements in retention to Year 12 for those disadvantaged groups for whom we have data. Nevertheless, significant gaps remain between the participation of Indigenous, rural and remote, and low socioeconomic background students and the participation of other Australians.