Amid all the uncertainty about where we'll be left by the many pressures bearing on us and our economy – climate change and digital disruption, for starters – there's one truth we can cling to: the more we enhance our natural capital and our human capital, the better placed we're likely to be.
Unfortunately, seeing the sense of this is a lot easier than ensuring it happens.
On natural capital – the preservation of species and physical resources, and the healthy functioning of the ecosystem – we've got one whole side of politics still struggling to get its climate-change deniers back in their box.
Even on human capital – the acquisition of knowledge and know-how – there's plenty of conflict, ranging from economic rationalists who think constraining the growth in government spending and taxation more important than accruing human capital, to people in the education system who think the adequacy of their present performance is no one's business but their own.
On the one hand, we've got the smaller-government brigade saying the performance of, say, school education can be fixed without spending an extra dollar.
On the other, we have teachers – some of them, anyway – arguing there's no problem that having taxpayers hand over a lot more bucks wouldn't fix.
How would the extra money be spent? That's for teachers and education departments to decide, and for everyone who isn't a teacher – and therefore knows nothing about schools – to mind their own beeswax.
The smaller-government brigade closes its eyes to the need to improve the performance of our schools and to the significant economic and social gains we stand to make by improving that performance.
The size of these gains can be demonstrated using the Fairfax-Lateral Economics index of Australia's wellbeing, compiled by Dr Nicholas Gruen and published every quarter upon the release of the national accounts.
The index overcomes the limitations of gross domestic product as a measure of economic progress by starting with the most appropriate modification of GDP – real net national disposable income – and adding to it estimates of the value of human capital, natural capital, the effects of distributional inequality, environmental amenity, health and employment-related satisfaction.
The measure of human capital takes account of early childhood risk, school performance, tertiary education, innovation (multi-factor productivity) and skills atrophy from long-term unemployment.
The indicator used to measure our progress in school education is the change in our score from the regular testing of our 15-year-olds' reading ability under the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment.
Our kids' reading score has fallen almost continually since 2000, from 528 to 503, or 4.7 per cent. By comparison, Canada's score has declined only marginally over the period, from 534 to 527.
The index's estimates suggest that, were we able to lift our score only to Canada's level, this would increase the value of our human capital by almost $17 billion a year.
That's equivalent to about 1 per cent of GDP – far more than promised by almost any other proposed economic reform, including cutting the company tax rate.
Putting it another way, had our 15-year-olds' performance not deteriorated since 2003, the estimated value of the human capital – know-how – in the heads of this year's 15-year-olds would be $17 billion greater than it is.
Our kids' academic performance in each of the areas measured in the PISA tests – reading, maths and science – has been deteriorating, though at differing rates. This is worse than the picture shown by successive NAPLAN test results, summarised as flat to down.
This is why teaching is a problem too important to be left to teachers. The more so because some teachers – a minority, I trust – have become hyper-defensive, refusing to acknowledge there's a problem, telling themselves that, if there is a problem, it's everybody's fault bar their profession's, and branding any non-teacher who dares to offer an opinion a "teacher-basher".
Julia Gillard's attempt to use the measurement (via NAPLAN) and publication (via the My School website) of students' and schools' academic performance to raise standards by fostering competition between schools was misguided – pseudo-economic – and has failed.
But too much of the resistance and criticism of NAPLAN and My School arise from some teachers' desire to continue avoiding public accountability for the quality of their work.
It should go unmeasured (because fault can be found with every form of measurement humans have tried) and, to the extent that performance information exists, it should remain confidential to insiders, because outsiders lack the expertise to interpret it correctly.
Sorry guys, but more money comes at the price of greater accountability to, and scrutiny by, the mug taxpayers who cough it up.
