Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The claim of the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth last year that the curriculum was ‘historically’ endorsed suggests he did not understand the difference between success and failure. Far from endorsing the finished curriculum, the ministers appeared to have humiliated the minister for schools and the Prime Minister by accepting the patently obvious that a lot more work needs to be done to get this curriculum right. In fact, they in the end had to endorse a proposal from New South Wales to develop a blueprint to iron out issues such as the curriculum covering too much content, being overly prescriptive and lacking clear achievement standards.

It is a very sad day when the federal government have to take a proposal from the New South Wales government, arguably the worst government in the history of the nation, because their own minister for schools is so inept and incompetent that he did not realise the national curriculum was not ready for introduction. And do not just take my word for it, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I doubt you would. The curriculum has been roundly criticised by the state governments, stakeholder organisations and education experts. It has been described as ‘overcrowded, incoherent and lacking depth’, ‘a step backwards’, ‘inferior’, ‘lacking quality and clarity’ and as being ‘unclear and not ready to teach’. Its rigidity is outlined in a letter last year to Minister Garrett from the Australian Curriculum Coalition, which consists of 13 peak bodies ranging from the Australian Education Union and the Australian College of Educators right through to the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia. The one thing the national curriculum has achieved is uniting the most diverse range of people imaginable across the sector. They argue that Labor’s curriculum lacks a clearly stated direction with no overarching framework:

There is no clear statement about the issues that a national curriculum is designed to address, apart from the problem of mobile students … There is a need for an overarching framework for the curriculum to provide clarity about the conceptual model underpinning it.

They went on to explain that the curriculum is overcrowded:

As they stand, the documents will lead to serious overcrowding of the curriculum. The documents include too much lower order content to be learnt at the expense of higher order skills and conceptual understanding, leading to a degree of risk to teaching quality and the chances of effective student learning.

Julia Gillard has long claimed the curriculum would take three years to develop and be ready to implement by January 2011. In April 2008, Ms Gillard, the Prime Minister, promised:

A national curriculum publicly available and which can start to be delivered in all jurisdictions from January 2011.

This brings me to my final point. Last year it came to my attention that the Schools Assistance Act 2008 requires non-government schools and systems to introduce the national curriculum ‘prescribed by the regulations’ on or before 31 January 2012. Now that the curriculum time line is behind Labor’s original schedule, with some states and territories having announced they will not implement it until 2013, this obviously needs to be amended. But I note that the Schools Assistance Amendment (Financial Assistance) Bill does not deal with this issue, as one might have expected. So, while the coalition will not delay the passage of this bill, we do make a simple suggestion that it makes sense to amend the act now and change the time line for the curriculum for non-government schools to be implemented in line with state and territory schedules. I foreshadow that I will seek to move the following amendment:

(1)    Schedule 1, after item 3, page 3 (after line 17), insert:

3A Subsection 22(2)

Omit “31 January 2012”, substitute “a date set by the Minister by legislative instrument”.

3B After subsection 22(2)

Insert:

        (3)    The Minister may not set a date for subsection (2) that is earlier than the date by which he or she is satisfied the national curriculum will be implemented in government schools in each State and Territory.

        (4)    If it appears that the national curriculum will be not be implemented in government schools in each State and Territory by the date that has been set for subsection (2), the Minister must set a later date.

Why is this so important? While it sounds slightly arcane—

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