Tag Archive for: education

Australia needs a college of policing to bring jurisdictions together

Police leaders and academics often analyse what policing looks like now and what its future will or should be. I would argue that policing must change to maintain and to improve its relationship with broader society. Police forces must also enhance their capabilities and capacities.

Standards around the world, including in Australia, could be improved through the establishment of a ‘college of policing’ concept–as distinct from a ‘police college’–to enhance the development of policing as a profession, while connecting directly to issues that are relevant and prevalent in society.

Australians need a college of policing so that they all receive the same level of quality policing and assured standards across the country. At present, the individual police organisations across Australia cannot agree on the best type of weapon, standards of training, responses to threats and recruiting standards.

The issue is being debated in Canada now as we face those issues, and there’s an opportunity to start the discussion in Australia.

A college of policing would ensure more effective regulation of police and their agencies in the public interest, ensuring that all officers are appropriately trained, certified and registered, and entitled to practise their craft. Creation of a college of policing would assure the public that training, education and policing are carried out to the highest standards and are as relevant as possible.

The United Kingdom started its college in 2012, demonstrating a clear desire to improve the capability and capacity of its policing. It has focused on connecting officers, educators and others working on or with policing.

Each police jurisdiction in Australia runs independently but all have similar compositions. While each police force has strong training and education programs, they vary across the nation. Gaps remain in the development of officers and their agencies that could be corrected with the establishment of a strong college of policing which could identify what’s required in a police officer and help set organisational standards.

Connecting those involved from the beginning can help develop policing standards and practices across the country, including recruitment and training, and improve the delivery of services to communities. Such a college could identify and set the competencies needed by police and pinpoint gaps.

Using evidence-based knowledge and providing a voice for police, agencies and the associations or unions that represent officers would enhance specific programs. It would connect individuals working in policing and law enforcement to those researching the issues that impact on communities and law enforcement.

Australian states and territories share some policing responsibilities following the establishment of the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency under which Australian and New Zealand law enforcement agencies seek to develop common practices and training. They’ve established committees to engage on specific issues. But this model includes no requirement to accept or adopt these standards or practices.

The UK College of Policing model has pre-entry programs for potential recruits delivered by approved and certified providers to improve education and training. A result of this has been to move policing from what is often seen as a trade with specific skills and training to a profession where education increases an officer’s capacity to deal with an ever-changing environment. The UK model has identified higher education as fundamental for a police officer.

An Australian college of policing could carry out the research needed to increase officers’ ability to deal with issues like mental illness and drug addiction. It could also look at ‘use of force’ training, command and control models, and training overall to ensure consistency across jurisdictions and assure the public that it’s receiving the best service possible.

Once it’s established, every graduate of the college would work in their profession in accordance with national standards and they would keep current and competent as methods and techniques change.

From the bookshelf: ‘Invisible China: how the urban–rural divide threatens China’s rise’

Whenever Scott Rozelle visits a Chinese village, he offers his students a small reward if they can find a healthy male aged 18 to 40. They seldom succeed, because most working-age men and many women have migrated to cities for employment, leaving their children to be brought up by their grandparents and educated in the local school. The parents return to the village annually for the Lunar New Year festival but play a minimal role in their children’s upbringing. It’s a sad and all too common story affecting more than 100 million Chinese households.

The literature predicting China’s decline tends to focus on its authoritarian politics and problems in the macroeconomy. Rozelle, a professor at Stanford University who has been studying rural China for four decades, and Natalie Hell, a member of his research team, take a different tack. Their fresh book, Invisible China, focuses on an issue that has received little attention, China’s vast, isolated and long-neglected rural population. As the authors see it, the rural challenge has ‘remained invisible for too long, not only to the outside world but also to many Chinese’.

Rozelle and Hell present a stark assessment of China’s human capital. China’s urban workforce, the driver of the country’s spectacular growth, comes mainly from rural areas. Basic skills were sufficient to move China quickly from poverty to middle-income status. But China’s workers are ill-equipped for the next stage of the country’s growth trajectory.

China’s household registration (hukou) system, which strictly separates the urban and rural populations, prevents rural migrants from settling in cities and getting a high-quality education for their children. The burden for educating China’s workforce falls on the country’s rural schools, which are generally of low quality.

As a result, China is teetering on the brink of the ‘middle-income trap’. Beating the trap is no mean feat. Of the 101 countries that were considered middle income in 1960, half a century later only 13 had become high income. The ‘graduates’ include Ireland, Portugal, Spain, the Asian ‘tigers’ (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and a few Eastern European countries. Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand and many others failed to make the cut.

What’s the key to moving up? According to Rozelle and Hell, it’s having a labour force with at least a high-school education that gives workers the skills to move between jobs. No country has made it to high-income status with high-school attainment below 50%. When South Korea and Taiwan moved up, their high-school graduates were already on a par with those in rich countries. In contrast, China has high-school attainment of slightly over 30%.

There’s a lot of hype about China’s educational excellence, from Shanghai’s 15-year-olds winning the 2012 international PISA test to the notorious ‘tiger mothers’ who push their children through China’s gruelling university entrance exams. Rozelle and Hell remind us that this is only half the story. China’s coastal cities are a world apart from its rural areas, which have suffered chronic underinvestment in education.

The authors trace the roots of the problem to China’s recent history. Mao Zedong established the hukou system in the 1950s and actually worked against the accumulation of human capital. During the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, all universities and most academic high schools were closed, and highly educated people were humiliated or persecuted. Mao’s Little Red Book was often the only available text.

Deng Xiaoping opened the universities and recognised the need to learn from other countries, but it was only under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao that education received attention. Surprisingly, China only recognised education as a public good in the early 2000s, when tuition fees for compulsory schooling (the first nine years) were abolished. Prior to that, the rural population was at a huge disadvantage. Even now, academic high schools charge tuition. The authors welcome recent policy shifts, but they may be too little, too late.

The urban–rural divide persists to this day. Over 60% of China’s population lives in cities, but only 36% has urban hukou. Other urban dwellers—over 300 million strong—work and live in a grey area. Despite nearly two decades of policy pronouncements, cities and municipalities have paid only lip service to relaxing the hukou system. They are simply unwilling to take on the fiscal burden of paying rural migrants’ social benefits and educating their children. Unless the issue is addressed, China’s future workforce will continue to be educated in poor-quality rural schools.

Rozelle and Hell would like to see China succeed, and remind us how important this is for the whole world. But they are concerned with the slow progress in reforming education. China has recently become more authoritarian, limiting cooperation with the education systems of other countries and even restricting the foreign books that children can read. Invisible China sounds a wake-up call.

Partnership with government needed to rebuild universities’ business model

There’s a wrestle underway between Australia’s universities and the government over funding, priorities and the future. Right now it looks like a Mexican standoff, not a negotiation. There are grounds for a deal, although getting there will take a shift from both the sector and the government.

Universities are in a crisis brought about by the collapse in their revenues from the pandemic. Some 20% of university revenues and enrolments have come from overseas in recent years, the majority from Chinese students.

So, the immediate crisis is a revenue one. There’s a bigger crisis just behind this, however, and that’s the collapse of a business model that was based on two things: high overseas student numbers (from multiple countries) and an assured market in the form of large numbers of Chinese students. Neither pillar of the business model looks guaranteed into the future.

Overall international student enrolments may stay depressed owing to the changed economic and travel conditions the Covid-19 pandemic has brought. And Chinese student numbers may increasingly be hostage to coercive trade measures from Beijing.

The sector is highly motivated to respond. Peak bodies like Universities Australia and the Group of Eight are working with individual universities and with state, territory and federal governments on various plans to restart travel to Australia by international students. Universities are also beginning to conduct on-campus courses in ‘Covid-safe’ ways.

This is all understandable as an immediate crisis response, but it’s unlikely to rebuild the university sector in any sustainable way. Much of this response sounds like the government’s initial thinking for Australia’s broader economy as the pandemic took off—remember the idea of temporary support as the ‘bridge’ back to how we were before? The government has since recognised the bridge is to a different future economy, not the one we had pre-pandemic. Universities must make this same conceptual shift.

The magnitude of change that the sector faces requires a much deeper and broader set of changes and responses than we’ve seen to date. That seems to be the government’s view too. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and some of his key ministers have resisted calls to include universities in the JobKeeper program—probably in part because they want to see the sector engage in structural change and not just hold its breath and live on taxpayer-funded life support before picking up where it left off.

This ‘tough love’ doesn’t seem to be shifting the universities, though. Some are recycling old arguments, like the idea that the Coalition is ideologically opposed to chunks of universities’ programs in areas such as identity politics and is critical of how universities have managed freedom of speech on campus. And we’ve seen resurrected criticism of government funding, saying the lack of an increase in recent years, along with policies deregulating student numbers, is what drove universities towards their now failed business model. This is a dialogue of the deaf.

What might break the standoff? It could be an agenda with three big priorities: focusing on domestic students’ requirements, growing diversified international student markets, and building a world-class digital education model so universities can provide courses that don’t require attending a physical campus.

Education Minister Dan Tehan has been explicit about a return to prioritising domestic students’ needs with targeted, quality higher education that fits the requirements of our future economy. That’s a core purpose universities already have, so it’s one they could quite easily recommit to. It will require a change in focus, though—the criticism that courses and learning have been undercut by the abiding focus on overseas students seems to have some merit.

While their overall numbers may stay lower than in the recent boom times, there’s probably still a sensible business case for universities to bring international students to Australian campuses as the crisis phase of the pandemic abates. But simply rebuilding the old market would be a strategic business error in light of Beijing’s foreshadowing its willingness to use Chinese student enrolments as an economic weapon to pressure Australia over policies in areas completely unrelated to education. The sheer business risk for universities in building back a high business reliance on the Chinese student market means a different path where China is a lesser priority makes sense.

Australian higher education is a valuable international commodity. Growing markets in Southeast Asia (notably Indonesia) and expanding further into the Indian market makes business and strategic sense. The problem, of course, is that this requires work and is by no means an easy, short-term fix for the dependence on China—nor is there any single substitute for Chinese students in terms of numbers.

This is where a sector–government partnership might work, as ASPI’s Peter Jennings and Marcus Hellyer have written. It’s about structural reform. The government wants universities to move away from their reliance on the single revenue stream from China. Instead of waiting to see this shift come from financial and market pressures, a targeted university stimulus program could assist the sector to plan, fund and deliver the shift to this new model.

In parallel, it would be wise for our universities to look at what they’ve achieved with digital delivery of higher education before and during the pandemic, and invest further in a permanent, high-quality digital education model. The goal would be to allow students from anywhere in the world to study with our universities without needing to be here.

This shift will be an even bigger business, cultural and institutional change for the sector. And it needs to be done with care to protect the quality and integrity of the education provided. This digital model has the potential, though, to make our universities bigger players globally. It will also protect the sector against future shocks that affect travel, and can also help diversify markets and revenue streams.

All this will not magically happen if the government holds firm on providing limited assistance to the sector and if universities continue to try to resurrect their pre-pandemic business model.

Long-term, successful structural reform of this magnitude will require new funding in addition to the $18 billion the federal government already provides every year. A figure somewhere in the order of $2–4 billion per year may be required to support universities and university staff while they invest in and develop new or expanded regional markets and perhaps to subsidise students too.

Now is the time for a new discussion between the government and universities on the future of the sector. The shift that results can re-establish the centrality of our universities for Australia’s wellbeing, prosperity and security. An alignment between the government and the sector that looks difficult on the surface may actually be quite achievable.

The Safe Schools Declaration: protecting schools during wartime

The blood stains on the classroom walls couldn’t be washed away following the Taliban attack on the middle school in Postak Bazaar village in Afghanistan. ‘We had to chip it away from the wall with an axe,’ a school official told Human Rights Watch.

But the blood wasn’t that of the school’s students. It was that of seven members of the Afghan National Police, a counter-insurgency force that had set up their military base inside the school. That attack was in 2010. After the Taliban retook the area, their fighters too slept in the school.

By 2015, government forces were back, and established their base with sandbagged positions on the second floor, while students tried to continue their schooling below.

Alarmed school officials obtained a letter from the Kabul authorities ordering the forces to leave, but their commander ignored it. At exam time, school officials again presented the letter, but the soldiers fired their guns toward the assembled teachers and students, who fled.

Since the Australia-supported military intervention in Afghanistan began in 2001, foreign donors have invested heavily in education, building schools and providing textbooks across the country. The expansion of education in Afghanistan, especially for girls, has been one of the success stories of the past 15 years. But as the security situation has deteriorated, schools throughout Afghanistan have been under threat, not only from resurgent Taliban forces but also from the Afghan state security forces mandated to protect them.

But it’s not just in Afghanistan that schools are under attack, or are being taken over by military forces. In the majority of countries with armed conflict around the world, schools are being attacked and used for military purposes, often converted into military bases or barracks. As the middle school in Postak Bazaar illustrates, the military use of schools not only turns schools into targets for attack, but the presence of armed forces inside a school can also interfere with education even if the school continues operating.

On 1 June, Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced the government would contribute $2 million to improve education for children in emergencies, including facilitating safe places to learn.

But there’s one more thing Australia could do to protect children’s education in emergencies, and it doesn’t cost a cent: endorse the Safe Schools Declaration. The Safe Schools Declaration (not to be confused with the ‘Safe Schools’ program for LGBT students being debated in Australia) marks an inter-governmental political commitment where countries pledge to protect students, teachers, schools and universities from attack during times of war. Last month marked its two-year anniversary.

So far 66 nations have endorsed the declaration aimed at ending the use of schools by militaries or armed groups. But Australia isn’t yet one of them. The declaration builds a community of nations committed to respecting the civilian nature of schools and developing and sharing examples of good practices for protecting schools during war. Countries that join agree to restore access to education faster when schools are attacked, and to make it less likely that students, teachers and schools will be attacked in the first place. They seek to deter such attacks by promising to investigate and prosecute war crimes involving schools. And they agree to minimise the use of schools for military purposes so they don’t become targets for attack.

On 13 February, some members of the Australian Parliament urged the government to join an international effort to protect students, teachers and schools in countries affected by war.

MPs Chris Hayes, Trent Zimmerman, and Maria Vamvakinou laid out the chilling details of how students and schools are all too frequently deliberately attacked during armed conflict, pointing to examples in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan and Syria.

In response to a question on notice on 17 March, the Attorney-General George Brandis stated that the government had decided not to endorse the Safe Schools Guidelines and Declaration ‘as we assess they do not reflect existing international humanitarian law’. But in fact, countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, which have centuries-old traditions of professional militaries, were among the first to join the declaration.

The Declaration doesn’t create a legal obligation, but is a political commitment. Indeed, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is traditionally seen as the guardian of international humanitarian law, has actively disseminated the guidelines to its staff.

As both Hayes and Zimmerman noted, when Australia was on the United Nations Security Council in 2014, it felt it appropriate to encourage other countries to take action to protect schools. Australia used its vote to encourage all countries to consider concrete measures to deter military use of schools.

Australia’s Ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, told the Security Council members that using schools for military purposes gravely endangers the lives of children. ‘We need to do more to protect schools, teachers, and students during conflict,’ Quinlan relayed to the UNSC. ‘The child victims around the world count on us.’

Quinlan, representing the Australian government, was spot on. On 15 May UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all UN member states to endorse the declaration. It’s now time for Australia to rediscover the position it held in 2014.

CVE and building resilience in schools

Classrooms

Schools are now on the frontline of countering violent extremism (CVE). Last week, the New South Wales government announced a state-wide audit  of all prayer groups conducted in public schools following allegations of radical Islam being preached in a Sydney playground.

Premier Mike Baird noted that:

I don’t think any one of us could have imagined four or five years ago the concept of 13- and 14-year-olds being involved in extremism and signing up for terrorist activities. That’s something almost beyond comprehension.

NSW Police will develop training for the education department on radicalisation and extremism. That’s sensible, even though the national counterterrorism blueprint, released last week by the Council of Australian Governments, didn’t mention building resilience in schools.

Fortunately we’re not at the point here of ‘Operation Trojan Horse’ in Birmingham. Peter Clarke, former chief of the UK’s Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism command, found last year that there was a ‘coordinated, deliberate and sustained action to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos’ into some Birmingham schools.

The blunt reality is that both federal and state governments are rarely in a position to observe early signals of radicalisation. It’s the teachers who have regular contact with young people.

Teachers are often best placed to note changes of ideas and behaviour that may indicate that their students are being radicalised and in need of help. They might, for example, hear a student expressing an interest in traveling to a conflict zone overseas with the intent of fighting with ISIS.

So it’s necessary that we raise awareness among those who work in schools about the dangers of extremism. Just as they would do if they detected young people falling prey to social ills like drugs or paedophilia, teachers have a duty to report cases of radicalisation. (A contrary view may be found here.)

However, that’s not to suggest that a few hours of training is going to make a teacher attuned to the complex dynamics of radicalisation. Without sufficient knowledge, well-meaning efforts may produce adverse consequences.

We don’t want our teachers to be too cautious. But on the other hand, we don’t want them to be paranoid or resort to moral panic about the risks of extremism. Teachers will need to refer vulnerable children to a voluntary (although in some cases compulsory) counselling program with strong mentors. To date, we’ve only taken baby steps towards any counter-radicalisation intervention programs, (as opposed to CVE programs targeting communities).

Australian officials might selectively visit schools to dispel any misconceptions about Australian society and provide balanced information on our foreign policy interests in the Middle East and terrorism, rather than students relying on radical online material.

Our state and federal officials working to counter violent extremism should now step up their efforts to work with teachers to raise awareness of radicalisation and violent extremism, paying particular attention to students’ development needs. There’s also, as I’ve suggested before, a role for the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner to raise awareness in schools about the dangers of online extremism.

Radicalisation and extremism in schools

In an oped piece published today I’ve focused on the issue of safeguarding Australian school children from the risks of radicalisation and extremism.

I’d like to add four extra thoughts on this issue. First, in The Australian article I say that our academic researchers have let us down in that we don’t have a good understanding of what’s happening to some of the most vulnerable in our school system in relation to extremism and radicalisation.

But in making that observation, I do recognise that the importance of education has been raised before in the context of counter-radicalisation in Australia.  I think that one of the reasons we don’t have much research data on what’s happening in our schools is because the radicalisation of younger people hasn’t, until recently, been seen as a real threat. I suspect that many teachers have been reluctant to admit that there’s an issue with extremism. Read more