It was not Joan Kirner who ‘closed the technical schools’. It was the Kennett government. The Cain Labor government, again, not Joan Kirner, stopped building new technical and high schools, instead building post-compulsory schools, started to amalgamate some high and technical schools and renamed lots of schools ‘secondary colleges’, but you only had to spend 30 seconds inside a ‘secondary college’ to tell whether it was a high or a tech.

The actual closures occurred under the Kennett government after 1992, as did the closures of high schools.

‘Empowering local communities by reducing centralised, bureaucratic control and giving parents a greater say’ and ‘allowing choice and diversity in education’ have been going on since 1968, when Ron Reed freed up central control of the curriculum. In the 1970s, Victoria provided ‘considerable discretion to school heads and school faculties in determining how resources are allocated’.

I had curriculum autonomy as a classroom teacher in 1974. I was a member of a locally elected school council in 1975. I was locally selected as an English coordinator in 1976 and ran that faculty with a degree of autonomy for the rest of the 1970s and other English faculties in two other schools in the 1980s and the 1990s. I applied for a locally selected vice principal position in 1987. I was appointed to a locally selected advanced skills teacher level 3 position in 1992 and a locally selected leading teacher position in 1996. I sat on local selection panels for classroom teachers in both the 1990s and the 2000s. I implemented local principal-devised school-council approved budgets in the 2000s. The centralised education system is a myth.

It was the Coalition government of the 1990s that introduced ‘“command and control” environments’ and moved away from ‘school systems in which the people at the frontline have much more control of the way resources are used, people are deployed, the work is organised and the way in which the work gets done’. It did this by a whole raft of long-winded useless accountability schemes that ended up with not one child in the state better taught.

I spent almost all my years as a teacher in disadvantaged schools, starting in the Housing Commission area of West Heidelberg. We need to learn from the success of the distant past and the failure of the market-based ideology imposed over the last 20 years.

I was the timetabler of Waterdale High School, a disadvantaged school in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, from 1976 to 1980. Its teachers were paid much more than today’s are. Its classes typically had fewer than 25 students. The average teaching load was 15 hours 29 minutes in 1979 – well below the 20-hour maximum imposed by the use of retrospective legislation in 1992 and still in place. It was sufficiently staffed to employ 13 per cent of its teachers in literacy and numeracy programs. The Commonwealth’s Disadvantaged Schools Programme provided teacher aides and materials. Its staffing, conditions and approaches to teaching produced a measurable improvement in students’ achievement.

It was part of a system. It had a strong teacher union branch, a positive factor in education. It had principals who accepted the professional judgement of their teachers and who were capable of working with them, who did not need the bully’s power to fire to be effective leaders. It did not have to waste its energy on mission statements, charters, strategic plans, local selection of staff, performance pay, onerous and pointless accountability measures or box and whisper graphs. It got on with its job of teaching.

If the average Victorian secondary school were as well staffed today as it was in 1979, it would have another five teachers, sufficient to return the teaching load limits stolen in 1992 and to make a difference to student learning.

Re: Academic success, so the argument goes, has nothing to do with merit, ability, hard work or a disciplined classroom environment, high expectations, effective teachers and a rigorous curriculum ...

Academic excellence? Everybody can be excellent. Just drop the standards. Easy.

Just spend more money to improve the national IQ. Easy.

Of course all those in the Ivy league, Oxbridge , Bonn, Max Planck universities came from disadvantaged backgrounds ...

Sorry to be sarcastic but I'm from the "old school".

Postcode poverty traps breed more and more of the same, and indeed, generations of families, in which there is no breadwinner.
To argue anything else is too ignore irrefutable facts.
Yes sure, some kids succeed in spite of their background; but this has more to do with serendipity, the luck of the draw, the throw of the dice, fate or destiny, than any other factor.
The very smartest and most dedicated may win their way out with this or that scholarship; and or, a doting Principle!
Just not by a much more equitable funding mechanism, or funding linked to need alone!
The Author seems to be making a case for the status quo, or protecting privilege?
Which arguably, is the cause of most of the post code poverty traps.
I'm not sure of Mr Donnelly's background, but I'm almost certain it wasn't a post code poverty trap?
Otherwise, the augments, would be vastly different, as would be the actual comprehension of the real causes of poverty; and or, man made selective disadvantage!?
Rhrosty.

Footnote: The argument for more autonomy in public education is well made!
And would save considerable money, which could be directed at unmet need!
Rhrosty.