Low productivity growth. The productivity of the education sector has been unable to keep up with other competing industries in their communities. Unfortunately we see a similar phenomenon for other labor intensive industries (nursing, public transport, etc).
All foundational to society and more "productive" industries. There seems to be a misalignment.
If industries were personas arguing at a table, Instagram demands pay and threatens to turn off Instagram immediately. Teachers damand pay and can only threaten to destroy society in 50 years. Psychologically, Instagram's threat is a lot more usable, because teachers don't want to pull the trigger on ending society.
In other words, Instagram has a more direct and immediate way of demonstrating value than teachers do.
Australia has exceptional 'productivity' from extracting geological resources, providing exceptional and taxable profits, and requiring few human resources. Low productivity in other areas (e.g., service industries, tech) is more caused by low investment in education than vice versa. Other industries won't find a home in Australia without a capable talent pool, and you can't have that without a well-funded education system.
In any economy there will be sectors that experience rapid growth and sectors that don't. The former will raise salaries, the latter will be impacted, because people have choice. With raising salaries you get raising rents, and this teachers get priced out.
Don't disagree that mining has caused property and rental prices to grow. Other factors in Australia are mandatory superannuation, with large funds buying up real estate, and also generous tax cuts for property investment.
This doesn't explain why Australia hasn't significantly invested in education in the last few decades.
I think in general the costs of low productivity sectors tend to outpace the average which kind of negates additional spending (we see that already, educational spending has grown a lot over the years).
>If the parents actually get more productive they can afford paying
That assumes that the gains in productivity are passed unto the parents in the form of increased income, do you have any data that shows this to be the case?
No. I believe in the last 20-30 years there has been a reallocation of wealth from wage workers to former house owners and stock owners.
But some of the parents gotta be either shareholders or cashed out houseowners?
I just moved from a city where teacher pay has gotten on par with engineers. The only thing needed was outlawing hiring unqualified teachers. Suddenly there was money for teacher salaries.
It didn't solve the housing question for other sectors though ...
