Did you know that the same Minister who is responsible for the aboriginal heritage policy is also responsible for the education of our children?

Tony Buti is the Minister for Education, having been drafted into the role back in December last year. 

This self described ‘pretty average school student’ from Kelmscott High is a high achiever who has taken his school education and gone on to earn various degrees, including teaching and law studying at two of the world’s most prestigious universities, Oxford and Yale. 

When not hitting the academic books, he has even written a few himself, covering topics such as the stolen generation, human rights and discrimination.

If anyone should have an understanding of the importance of education in creating opportunities for kids coming from battling families, it is this Minister.

When he first took up the role just under 12 months ago, he set himself the task of finding out the reasons why there had been a long-term decline in the proportion of Year 12s choosing to take the hard subjects that were key in opening up high-paying career opportunities in the health, science, law and engineering professions.

At the time he said he was worried that Western Australia was developing a culture in which seeking the “easiest possible” pathway into university outweighed the importance of tackling “challenging content”.

He flagged his intention to seek data from universities on the progress and success rate of non-ATAR students through our school system.

This got the approval from those responsible for university admissions, who have to deal with students who don’t have the maths, chemistry, physics or even English skills, to undertake the courses they have been accepted into.

Former Murdoch University academic Andrew Taggart, who now chairs the Tertiary Institutions Service Centre, has publicly complained that “Our State is in peril of heading down a low achievement-oriented high school curriculum, students need to be challenged academically.”

So, what did our Minister for Education do when faced with the challenge of challenging our teachers and students to take the hard road and not the easy road into university, and with it increasing students’ chances of undertaking a hard but ultimately high paying degree?

He no doubt looked carefully at the State’s declining ATAR participation data and matched it up with the declining results in many of the State’s lower social economic schools which he then matched up to the five years that this government has been in power, and decided to do what all weak ministers and governments do when it all gets too hard – he moved to bury the problem rather than tackle it head on.

The Minister has allowed the WA School Curriculum and Standards Authority to continue with their decision from January 2022, to no longer compile a ranking list of WA schools based on the median ATAR achieved by students in the graduating cohort. 

Something that has been available for the past 15 years until abolished by this government.

Nothing to see here students, move along parents, your local high school has a good vibe, no need to know how many year 12s sat 4 ATAR subjects, or if the school is improving or falling compared to its contemporaries.

Problem is there is lots to see, as under this government WA’s ATAR population has declined from the last year of the Barnett government in 2016 when we had 13,540 students doing ATAR, to just 9643 students in 2022, an almost 20 per cent drop.

WA’s ATAR participation rate also dropped to 31 per cent, whereas most other Australian states are above 50 per cent. 

Not our fault claims the government, it’s the fault of the mining boom, which ignores the fact that the Barnett government also had a massive mining boom to contend with.

No doubt the decision to keep the school tables buried from parents’ eyes has brought the Minister a great deal of support from the teachers’ union (a tick for his next preselection), which would much prefer to have a public discussion on class sizes and teacher salaries than on actual class and school outcomes.

Forget about the needs of the parents or the students, the ones stuck in the government school system because they can’t buy their way out into the world of private schools which are held to account by their fee-paying parents.

The uncomfortable truth is we need to benchmark against all schools to see what’s working and what’s not.

No doubt Labor governments wish the private system would fade away, as it’s to their embarrassment that many of the battlers who vote for them are forced to scrimp and save to avoid the low standards that their local public school sets itself.

The lame arguments that the league tables are unfair and don’t take into social economic challenges of the local community or don’t reflect the full offering of the school experience are a pure cop out.

Parents are not stupid, they understand that schools in the wealthy western suburbs will be different to schools in the eastern suburbs.

What they need to know is whether the government is pouring the resources and incentives into attracting teachers to the schools that are struggling. 

Without the acid test of the league tables being published, the government is off the hook on having to make any changes to how the system operates.

No doubt, post the 2023 ATAR results in three months time, we will read a press release from the Minister congratulating students for a successful 12 years at school with soothing words of moving forward and having left with a positive experience, even if most left without a useful ATAR. 

The only school comparison data that is now available is the Federal government’s NAPLAN tables. No doubt the State government would if they could cancel the NAPLAN results as even those results have our State schools going backwards under this State government.

Recall how this Minister wanted to know all about aboriginal heritage on private land, with details splashed across his departmental web site of the State’s 40,000 sacred sites, but he is not interested in publicly releasing the detail of how the State schools he is responsible for are travelling. 

If he was really interested in protecting not just the past of Aboriginal people but also their children’s future along with the future of all the other students in the State, he should reverse the decision to hide the school data.

After the heritage debacle Buti is on notice by his backbench.

After this year’s ATAR results come out he will be on notice by the State’s parents. By the next election, if he does not leave his mark on education, he will be like those kids who did not take the hard route through school, wondering what his next job will be.