Complexity of high quality and inequality education in Australia

Comments on Glyn Davis “Fix school performance or poor won't get into uni”, 22/07/2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25816657-5013480,00.html

The "high quality education and low equality" issue sounds very disturbing. But what its real causes are remains an important question but unclear. It is important to provide a truly equal opportunity for every kid or student to go to university, or higher education in an environment of limited resources.

The ability of State, or government is limited and government alone cannot solve all social issues existed. We need efforts from all walks of life or society. Parents have an important and irreplaceable role in their children education and the outcomes. Students themselves also have an important role.

I have not read the new book of “A New Federalism in Australian Education” by Jack Keating for the Education Foundation. I hope the book can provide some new insights into the issue of inequality of education in Australia.

However, from this article, some proposals of Keating seem to run the risk of introducing new inequality. For example, “strengthening of upper secondary pathways to further education and training that do not rely solely on academic results” would undoubtedly put down some students with better academic results and would be unfair to those students. One would ask the question: why aren’t their efforts recognised?

Inequality in education is an issue and that needs to be fixed. It is, however, important to introduce new inequality when fixing inequality.